Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside - Volume 14 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Demon Lord’s Demon Lord–Slaying Sword

“So there’s a sickness spreading?”

“Yeah, which is why it’s probably best for the sailors to limit their shore time as much as possible.”

Standing on the wharf, Rit and I told Yarandrala about the cold that had been going around Zoltan lately.

Ships carried people, but they also carried diseases.

“Got it. I’ll let them know.”

The sailors who’d rowed to the pier were taking a break on the boat. When Yarandrala told them about the sickness, they grimaced, then went back to the ship without coming ashore.

“It doesn’t seem like a serious disease so far, but it is highly contagious, so I’d rather not let it spread,” I said.

“I can’t believe this all happened while I was away.”

“It seems like it just started spreading recently,” added Rit.

“Rit and I only started noticing it the past few days. The symptoms are just like a bit of a bad cold, so at first we didn’t realize it was any different.”

As an apothecary, it was frustrating I hadn’t noticed the spread of a disease. I knew there was no way for me to judge whether one disease was the same as another or just similar, since there was no common skill that could determine the details of a person’s symptoms…but making up for that through knowledge and experience was the job of an apothecary.

“You be careful too, Red. You might think you’re on the side that’s healing people, but your blessing doesn’t prevent you from getting sick, does it?”

“That’s true, but my blessing level is high, so I can handle sicknesses better than most people with a lower resistance.”

“Don’t go comparing yourself with people who have lower blessing levels!” Yarandrala chided.

Blessings related to sickness were capable of endowing inherent skills that gave resistance to diseases. People who had blessings that used spirit magic, like Rit’s Spirit Scout and Yarandrala’s Singer of the Trees, also received resistances, while soldier- and martial artist–type blessings gradually improved a person’s resistance to things that impaired the body’s physical abilities.

Thinking about it like that, there are a lot of different kinds of resistance to disease.

The lowest-tier and most common blessing, Warrior, didn’t grant any resistance, though, so it was unlikely the spread of the disease would stop.

“Here, take these.” Yarandrala removed her leaf-shaped earrings and gave them to me and Rit.

“What are they?”

“Magic items made in Kiramin for high elves who travel the world. They ward against misfortune and grant a strong resistance to infection.”

I could feel a powerful magic power in the jewel of the earring. It probably used a secret type of spirit magic guarded by the high elves.

Items like these were almost never shared with anybody outside of their own race.

“These are incredibly valuable, aren’t they? Are you sure you want us to wear them?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

She’d gotten mad at me again.

“But be careful. Those jewels can only resist infection. They can’t help anyone who’s already sick.”

“Thank you. I’ll make sure I take good care of it.”

I wrapped mine in cloth and carefully tucked it away.

“Red,” Rit said from beside me. “How is it?!”

She excitedly gathered her hair behind her head, revealing the nape of her neck. Yarandrala’s earring was dangling from her ear.

“Does it suit me?”

“Yeah, it looks great on you… You look beautiful in a different way from Yarandrala.”

“Ehehe.” Rit covered her flushed cheeks and mouth with the bandana around her neck.

“Hehe, maybe I should give you both matching earrings for your wedding.”

“You want to give me a pair too?” I asked.

“Oh, I think they’d look great on you,” Rit chimed in.

“Hmmm… Really?”

As I pondered that thought, Yarandrala watched on with a kind expression on her face.

The three of us left the harbor district and went straight back home. I wanted to ask about Ruti’s New Truth, but…

“That’s not something we can talk about with other people around.”

“Right.”

It was an important topic that touched on the reason why blessings had been created.

“I was thinking of going out to the mountain tomorrow to gather medicinal herbs. Would you want to come too, Yarandrala?”

“Sure, that sounds great.”

There was no better place for a private conversation than in the mountains of Zoltan. No one would think there was some sort of big secret in a remote place like this.

Also…

“You know more about plants than anyone on the continent, so I’ll be counting on you.”

“Trying to find something to make a medicine for this new disease?”

“Yeah. For now, all we can do is treat the symptoms…but you might be able to figure something out.”

“It’d probably be a good idea to go by Dr. Newman’s clinic before we head to the mountain so I can see someone with the disease.”

“In that case, why don’t we go to Mogrim’s place tomorrow before we leave Zoltan? His wife Mink is sick and bedridden.”

“She is?! That’s concerning… I’m no doctor, but I do have confidence in my knowledge of medicinal plants, and I’ve seen a lot of different sicknesses in my travels, so I might be able to help.”

“Right now, Habotan is helping take care of Mink after she collapsed, so you should talk to her too after the party tonight winds down a bit.”

“Party…? You mean…?!”

Rit and I both smiled.

“We were all just so excited for you to get back.”

“It’s only a little get-together tonight, but the people at the Adventurers Guild and the Merchants Guild also wanted to welcome you back!”

“It sounds like everyone at the colosseum is looking forward to seeing you, too. Apparently, they’ve all been doing special training to take down the champion. I only caught a glimpse, but a few of them looked pretty good, and it seems like they’re coming up with all sorts of strategies. There might be someone who can finally give you a run for your money when you’re unarmed.”

“Yarandrala will probably give you an earful tomorrow for that when you take her out to the mountain,” Rit joked.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Yarandrala smiled as she listened to us.

“…Hehe, that makes me happy. Zoltan really is a nice place.”

Yarandrala had only been living in Zoltan since last winter. It hadn’t quite been a year, but she’d already made lots of friends and good memories here. Many people had been sad to hear she’d left to go on a trip, so I was sure they’d all want to talk to her after we got back from the mountain.

…Though I guess it only makes sense for everyone to know the star of the colosseum.

““Welcome back, Yarandrala!””

That evening, at Red & Rit’s Apothecary, we all gathered around Yarandrala to celebrate her safe return.

Rit and I, Ruti and Tisse, and Habotan and Torahime were all there.

“Thank you, everyone,” Yarandrala said, smiling happily.

The food on the table was mostly what I had put together yesterday, with a salad and a meat pie to accompany it. I would have liked to make more, but I’d been short on time.

So instead…

“It’s been a while since I had Oparara’s oden… Mmm, it really is delicious!”

We had stopped by Oparara’s stand on the way back and bought some oden. But since we’d gone there before she’d been open and there hadn’t been much ready at the time…

“Thanks for going to pick it up, Ruti.”

“Your cooking is the tastiest in the world, Big Brother, but I like Oparara’s oden, too.”

Ruti had come early after going to pick up the order for us. Thanks to that, we were able to serve some food for Yarandrala earlier than Rit and I had expected when we’d been discussing it during lunch.

“Oparara sends her regards. She was hoping to see you, too.”

“In that case, I’ll be sure to go and eat at her stand sometime.”

“That’s a nice idea. I’d like to come, too.”

“Please allow me to accompany you as well.”

Yarandrala, Ruti, and Tisse chatted as they ate their oden.

It was a relaxed conversation among good friends—the sort of thing that would never have happened while Ruti had been journeying as the Hero.

“By the way, Ruti, Tisse…what is this green-colored chikuwa bread?” Yarandrala asked.

“Medicinal chikuwa bread, our own creation.”

One plate on the table was loaded with medicinal chikuwa bread provided by Ruti and Tisse.

“Tisse’s chikuwa bread was popular at the colosseum, but it looks like you started something interesting while I was away!”

“We believed it necessary for the sake of Ms. Ruti’s plantation to increase the demand for medicinal herbs, so we began to sell medicinal food.”

“Huh…” Yarandrala took a bite out of the new chikuwa bread. “Ooh! That’s really good!! You worked the herbs into it, right? There should be some bitterness, but you did a really good job of balancing the flavors!”

“Mhm, Tisse and I tried all sorts of different experiments… Chikuwa even started showing up in my dreams.”

“It did?!”

“It got mad at me in the dream…demanding I make it more delicious. It was terrifying.”

“Hehe, to think you can even have such pleasant dreams now. That’s wonderful.”

“It wasn’t a pleasant dream. If anything, it was a nightmare.”

Ruti gestured with her body and hands as she explained just how scary it had been having chikuwa angry at her. Unfortunately, however, her best efforts at conveying a terrifying group of chikuwa didn’t really translate, and Yarandrala just laughed happily.

Being afraid of nightmares was also a part of being human, though. Back when Ruti had been the Hero, she hadn’t slept, or dreamed, or felt fear. For her to be able to talk about her dreams like this made both me and Yarandrala incredibly happy.

“But you managed to make such delicious bread, so aren’t the chikuwa all satisfied now?” I asked.

“Mhm.” Ruti nodded. “When we finished it, I had a dream where the chikuwa all praised me.”

“Ahaha,” I laughed, amused.

Everyone was watching Ruti’s growth with warm expressions on their faces.

Time flew by while we were enjoying ourselves. Yarandrala told stories from her trip, and we told her about the Harvest Festival in Zoltan. She had been away from the end of summer through to winter—the blink of an eye in the lifespan of high elves or higher-tier demons. Even in human terms, it wasn’t that long apart, but we still had no end of stories to tell and continued long after we’d finished all the food. We talked about a cute cat she’d seen in a distant land. The children in the neighborhood getting taller. The delicious stew at a snowy mountain lodge. How this year was a good vintage for Zoltan wine.

Just simple little scenes of life.

“This one has finally learned to bake bread!”

“That’s great! Can I try some the next time I come over?”

“Of course! Lady Torahime and I bake often!”

Yarandrala clapped excitedly for Habotan.

Having been raised as the demon lord’s daughter, Habotan had never done any cooking before, but now she could make bread. It wasn’t anything special, just the sort of normal bread that might be made in any house. That was it.

Yet that itself was a precious thing.

The memories of peaceful, everyday life lasted far longer and were much happier than the violent memories of fighting the Asuras of the demon lord’s forces.

Once the conversation died down a bit and I was starting to think about putting the dishes away, Yarandrala suddenly asked me a question.

“By the way, did a soldier by the name of Harmon come back to Zoltan?”

That was a name I hadn’t expected to hear.

Harmon was one of the soldiers who’d returned to Zoltan around the time of the Harvest Festival. He had volunteered to join the fight against the demon lord’s armies and had fought from the start to the end of the war. Even now, he was coming by the shop for help dealing with his psychological trauma.

“Yeah, he came back to Zoltan a little while ago. He’s working at a quarry managed by some close relatives.”

“Good. I’m glad he made it back to Zoltan.”

“I’m surprised, though. Do you know Harmon?”

“We adventured together once during my trip. He was quite brave…but he seemed conflicted over coming back to Zoltan. I’m glad to hear he did.”

“I can’t believe you ran into a soldier from Zoltan of all places and shared an adventure with them… The world sure works in mysterious ways.”

“Yes. I was just as surprised when I found out he was from here. We were in the middle of a serious conversation at the time, so I didn’t get to mention that I was also living in Zoltan.”

“In that case, he doesn’t know he’ll be able to meet you again here, does he?”

“Probably not. Though maybe he heard my name from someone else.”

“It is a pretty rare name.”

Yarandrala was the champion of Zoltan’s colosseum. I didn’t know whether Harmon liked to watch the fights there, but it wouldn’t be strange for him to have heard her name from a friend. If he heard a description, he’d probably recognize her as the same high elf he’d adventured with.

“But I feel like he would’ve told us if he knew you.”

“I think so too,” Ruti chimed in, nodding. “If he didn’t say anything, then he probably doesn’t know about Yarandrala.”

People tended to think that those of us who’d fought in battles liked to watch fights at the colosseum, too. On the whole, though, that tended not to be the case.

Huh, now that I think of it, I haven’t really heard much about the colosseum from Gonz or Nao.

“Do you want to go say hi to him tomorrow? He works at the same place every day, unlike adventurers, so we should be able to see him if we go in the morning.”

“Hmm, it would probably surprise him if we showed up during work, so let’s do it later.”

“Oh, right. He’s scheduled to come by here in three days, so you could probably see him then.”

“He’s coming here?”

“Yeah, for help dealing with the aftereffects of the war.”

“Ahh… He did seem a bit emotionally unstable. I guess he really was traumatized.”

“It’s not something he will recover from quickly, but he’s doing better. It is a little concerning, though, since Zoltan is so peaceful that there aren’t any doctors who are experienced at treating soldiers’ wounds.”

“You’re here, though, Red. You spent so much time studying the problems afflicting soldiers.”

Yarandrala had known me ever since I’d been in the Bahamut Knights. She seemed to know pretty much everything I’d done in the capital there.

“Yeah. When I set out with Ruti, there was a chance I might end up being the only one who knew how to lead soldiers, so I needed to be a commander who could do everything myself.”

I found myself thinking back to the soldiers the lord had provided and the militia that had gathered around us out of faith in the Hero. We had done the best we could and been victorious on almost every battlefield—but even then, soldiers had still died. We’d had no choice but to celebrate our victories and move forward without even the time to grieve the soldiers we’d lost.

“Still, you studied how to keep them alive, didn’t you?” Rit put her hand on my shoulder. “Some generals just think of infantry assembled during wartime as expendable, but you were kind to them.”

“Thanks. But I didn’t do anything worthy of that sort of praise… I just knew the war with the demon lord’s armies would be a long one, and I thought we’d lose if we treated soldiers as disposable.”

“You did it for Ruti’s sake too, right?”

“For me?”

Ruti looked a little surprised to hear her name brought up.

Rit sees right through me, doesn’t she?

“The people who fought for Ruti would live the rest of their lives regretting having gone to war. You didn’t want her to have to bear that burden.”

“Big Brother…”

“Well, we were only temporarily put in charge of groups of soldiers. We never ended up leading the same forces for an extended period of time.”

The Hero’s journey had required us to move from one battlefield to the next in order to rescue the various fronts teetering on the brink of collapse. In the end, I hadn’t been able to make much use of my soldiering studies, but surprisingly, they had come in handy here after I’d left.

“…I want to tell you about something from the time I spent adventuring with Harmon,” Yarandrala said abruptly.

It wasn’t like her to forcefully change the topic like that.

She looked at Habotan and Torahime.

“Is it connected to us in some way?” Torahime asked.

“I don’t know. It might just be that he had the same name.”

“His name…?” Habotan cocked her head.

Outside of her acquaintances in Zoltan, Habotan’s social circle was incredibly small. In fact, she likely didn’t have any acquaintances on the entire continent of Avalon.

“I met Harmon when I was investigating the tomb of the previous Hero.”

“The previous Hero’s Tomb?!”

The final resting place of the Hero before Ruti was supposed to be unknown. During the period of time after he defeated the demon lord until his comrade Sage Lilith appeared with the Hero’s young son and founded the Kingdom of Gaiapolis, he had disappeared into the shadows of history.

“Sage Lilith built the previous Hero’s Tomb and hid it with magic so no one would find it.”

“…I see.”

There was no end to the questions I had, but for now, I’d just accept it. What Yarandrala wanted to talk about wasn’t the past, but the present.

“Harmon’s group was searching for the Hero’s relics…though it’s not really accurate to call it ‘his’ group. He’d just been invited to accompany them and wasn’t particularly searching for anything himself.”

“And the problem is the people he was with?”

“Sort of, though it isn’t as if they did anything particularly problematic. I might be overthinking it; he could just have the same name and be similar in terms of skill.”

“You are being rather vague,” Torahime said, impatiently tapping her finger against the table. “I have not had much interaction with you, but you do not seem the type to dance around the topic like this.”

Yarandrala took a deep breath. What could have happened to cause this sort of a reaction.

“Again, I have no proof, so please try to stay calm.”

“Get to the point,” Torahime said brusquely.

“Sorry… There were two human-looking swordsmen with Harmon. They were quite skilled—skilled enough that it was hard to believe they could have hidden their strength for so long.”

“That’s saying something, coming from you.”

“They were strong enough to defeat the powerful giants Sage Lilith had modified to watch over the tomb. I got the impression they were stronger than me, probably about on par with Danan. And they didn’t even seem to have gotten serious yet.”

“As strong as Danan without even getting serious? That’s hard to believe.” I gulped.

Other than Ruti, Danan was the strongest human in the world. At least in terms of hand-to-hand combat ability, he surpassed even the S-rank adventurers who’d sat out during the war against the demon lord’s armies.

“And the names they used…were Taraxon and Bui.”

“What?!”

Torahime and Habotan both leaped to their feet in shock.

Taraxon was the name of the demon lord. And Bui… Rit and I both knew that name.

“Shisandan…!” Rit’s expression suddenly changed.

“Shisandan? The general who reports directly to Taraxon?” Torahime asked. “I heard he left the front lines after being defeated at the critical location of the northern Duchy of Loggervia.”

Apparently, that was how it had been reported within the demon lord’s army.

Even Torahime—a heavenly king and one of the highest commanders of the invasion of Avalon—didn’t know about his mission in Zoltan.

Humanity probably would have lost if Asuras and demons had put aside their enmity and had a more effective command structure.

“Shisandan infiltrated Zoltan, and the form he took was that of a young man named Bui,” I explained.

“At the time, Zoltan’s underworld was being controlled by a man named Bighawk who made a deal with a contract demon. Shisandan helped dismantle his schemes and was active as the adventurer Bui… He even tricked me,” Rit said bitterly.

Shisandan had killed Rit’s master Gaius, the commander of Loggervia’s royal guard, and taken his form. We had defeated him again in Zoltan, but until Torahime had come, we’d had no way to prevent Asuras from resurrecting.

Now, though…

“Calm down. First, we need to calmly analyze what information we have,” Ruti said softly but forcefully.

“Ruti’s right,” I said with a nod. “I got a little shaken up, too.”

“Yes…”

It seemed like Torahime still hadn’t fully recovered.

The Demon Lord Taraxon had defeated the rightful ruler of the dark continent. Our journey hadn’t culminated in a battle against the demon lord, but the strength of the various enemies we had fought spoke volumes of the strength of the one who stood above them all. And Torahime, who’d faced off against Demon Lord Taraxon directly, had an even clearer understanding of the threat he posed.

“All I saw were two swordsmen by the names of Taraxon and Bui searching for a relic of the Hero,” Yarandrala explained. “During that adventure, they showed no signs they were evil. And Harmon doesn’t seem like the sort of person to help out with anything bad, does he?”

“No, he’s a brave and kind man.”

“At the very least, I think during their journey together, Taraxon didn’t act like the demon lord. And while in camp, I investigated whether there were any influence or control spells cast on Harmon, but there weren’t.”

“Why would they have a simple soldier like Harmon accompany them?” Tisse asked.

“I can only think they wanted a companion who knew the lay of the land,” I said.

“The impression I got seeing them was that they relied on him and genuinely treated him as their comrade,” said Yarandrala.

“The demon lord did?”

“I imagine the demon lord wouldn’t be able to wield his full strength fighting in human form, but Harmon is an excellent soldier.”

We hadn’t ever seen Harmon fight since he’d come back to Zoltan. He was living a life that didn’t involve much need for fighting, so that was to be expected. But with the bravery he’d shown during the Harvest Festival, it wasn’t all that strange that he might have played a part in a battle of heroes.

“We will have to speak with this Harmon, then,” Torahime said.

“If it really was the demon lord, there’s no way he would have done anything that would have clued Harmon in.”

“Even the demon lord has no reason to suspect that Habotan and I are hiding here. I may be able to pick up something a human might miss.”

“All right… Then the next time Harmon comes by, I’ll ask you two to come and talk to him, too.”

“Please do.”

We would have to be careful not to let anything about Torahime’s connection with the demon lord’s armies slip.

Torahime should be fine, but…

I glanced over at Habotan.

“You’re currently helping take care of Mink while she’s sick, right?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Red and I will be sufficient to gather whatever information is needed from Harmon. You should continue to care for Mink and make note of any distinctive characteristics of the disease,” Torahime said.

“Yes, milady! …You want this one to keep notes?”

“Indeed. We were followed here by soldiers of the demon lord’s army. Though the odds are low, it is possible they may have brought a sickness from the dark continent, in which case our knowledge may be of some use.”

“I—I see!”

“For that, it is important to make notes of the symptoms and progression of the disease that is currently afflicting Zoltan. I am counting on you, Habotan.”

“Yes, milady!!”

Habotan seemed fired up by the importance of her duty…but it was an expedient way to keep her away from gathering information about the demon lord.

Probably a wise choice.

“Sorry for bringing this up at such a fun party. I don’t want to end it on a sour note like this, so why don’t we open one more bottle of wine? And another juice, of course.”

At Yarandrala’s suggestion, we ended the discussion there. This was a time to celebrate her safe return, after all.

“All right,” I said, standing up. “I’ll bring out a gentle, smooth wine that’s just right for when the party’s settling down.”

It was a bit expensive, but that should be fine for today. It was a small price to pay to have some more pleasant memories to look back on.

The next morning, Yarandrala, Habotan, and I headed to Mogrim’s shop.

Along the way, we saw a middle-aged man setting out cheap coats on a shelf in front of a store. They didn’t look as comfortable as the ones in Madam Offler’s shop, but the price was their big selling point.

“Oh, that man is one of the people who was laid up sick.”

“That’s good,” Yarandrala murmured in relief. “It looks like the sickness will heal properly.”

I had told her about it yesterday as well, but she was probably glad to see someone who had actually recovered.

“Good morning, Straub.”

“Oh, if it isn’t Red. Morning.”

Straub looked a bit gaunt, but there was a good color to his face.

“Feeling better already?”

“Sure am. Your medicine works wonders.”

“It just eases the symptoms. The best medicine was that you don’t drink that much and generally take good care of yourself.”

“That so? It has been a while since I was sick, so it surprised me.”

Straub’s blessing was Martial Artist. Although he didn’t really make a living in a way that put it to much use, he was strong and sturdy. The gentle urging of the Martial Artist blessing to take care of one’s body had probably also contributed to his good health.

“From the looks of it, there don’t seem to be any lingering effects. Is there anything still bothering you?”

“Nah, not really. If anything, this cold weather’s my biggest problem today,” he said, rubbing his hands together for warmth.

Mogrim’s store was closed. He was operating on shorter business hours until Mink was better.

“Resist Disease,” Yarandrala said, her spell enveloping the three of us. “Just to be safe.”

“My blessing provides immunity, so this one will be fine, however you should probably be careful, Mr. Red.”

“I’ve got the earring I’m borrowing from Yarandrala. That said, this is probably an unknown disease we’re dealing with, so I appreciate it.”

Yarandrala’s barrier eased any concerns about catching whatever this was. Now I could focus on the checkup.

Habotan knocked on the door.

“Mr. Mogrim, it is Habotan. This one has come to help!”

“Oh! Thanks for coming!!!” There were heavy footsteps, and then the door opened. “What’s this? Red and the high elf are here, too?”

“Morning, Mogrim. We came to check on Mink.”

“Is Mink all right?”

“She seems to be doing worse than yesterday… If I could take her place, I would. You don’t know any good medicine that might help her?” Mogrim asked dejectedly.

He really loved his wife, so seeing her suffering like this must have been tough on him.

“There’s no miracle cure for this one. All we can do is ease the symptoms and boost her body’s vitality until she can heal on her own.”

“Ugh…!” Mogrim groaned.

“Anyway, let’s talk inside. I want to see how Mink’s doing.”

“Right! And I don’t want her to have to raise her voice if she needs to call for me!!”

We took off our cloaks and followed Mogrim into the room where Mink was resting.

“Mink, I’m coming in,” Mogrim announced in a gentler voice than I’d ever heard out of him.

“Ahh… Habotan. You’re here again today.”

“Yes, ma’am! This one has come to help!”

Habotan gently stopped Mink from trying to sit up.

She looks a lot worse than I expected…

“You came too, Red, and… Oh, is that you, Yarandrala? You came to see me even though you only just got back to Zoltan?”

Mink was used to seeing lots of people while working behind the counter of the store here, but just now, she’d noticed us only after she’d spotted Habotan. That was nothing like how she normally was, evidence of just how much of a toll the sickness had taken on her.

“Hi, Mink. I got worried when I heard you were bedridden with an illness.”

“Haha… My husband is always blowing things out of proportion.”

Even her laugh sounded feeble.

Yarandrala and I sat next to her bed, chatting reassuringly as we checked her pulse and fever.

“Could I take a look at the inside of your mouth?” Yarandrala asked.

Mink nodded and opened wide.

“There’s swelling. That’s a common enough symptom for a cold, though…”

“She has a high fever. Still, it’s not too dissimilar from when a cold takes a turn for the worse…”

I connected with my blessing and activated On-the-Spot Diagnosis, a First Aid mastery skill that allowed me to know how to ease any life-threatening symptoms, even if I didn’t know what was causing them. It was intended to keep someone alive until an actual doctor could arrive; however, it could also be used to work backward to figure out the cause of a disease by finding out the medicine necessary to deal with it.

“Something for the fever…and hangover medicine?”

““Huh?””

Yarandrala and Mogrim were both surprised by that unexpected answer.

“A hangover cure? That really doesn’t seem like it fits here.”

“No, I know. But the answers we get from the skill shouldn’t be wrong…”

It selected the most appropriate treatment out of everything I knew. If no medicine I knew of would work, then it would just recommend something to stop the pain, but it shouldn’t recommend something without any effect at all.

“…Let me think about this for a moment.”

A hangover cure?

There were all sorts of medicines for hangovers, including ones made with a certain aquatic plant called water spirit grass. As the name implied, a hangover cure was used to quickly clear up the aftereffects of alcohol. It targeted headaches and had a diuretic effect, speeding up the flow of water through the body in order to quickly work the alcohol out of a person’s system and expel the toxins.

That wouldn’t work on a cold, though. In fact, accelerating the body’s ability to process water would make you need to go to the bathroom more often, and you would have to be careful of dehydrating. For that reason, it wasn’t recommended to treat colds.

Though it just means you have to be careful to drink enough water.

“…Water?”

“Red?”

I’d had a thought.

“Mink, have you felt like your thoughts are getting hazy or had any trouble focusing on things?”

“I mean, with this high a fever, there are times when my mind goes blank.”

“Mogrim, Habotan, have you noticed anything?”

“Hmmm. Well, last night, she was a little absent-minded, and there have been times when she struggled to hold a conversation.”

“Yes, this one has noticed that as well.”

“…Really?” Mink asked.

She looked uneasy. It certainly was worrying to have something wrong with the part of your brain that controls thought.

But this was good news. The scariest thing is not knowing how to treat an illness.

“What’s going on, Red?”

“I think this disease is causing encephalitis. Because of that, water is building up in Mink’s head.”

“Encephalitis?!”

“I think that’s why my skill recommended a hangover cure as an effective treatment. We need to drain the water in her head to limit any damage to her brain.”

“If it’s hangover cure you need, then I’ve got some I bought from you!” Mogrim said and dashed out of the room.

“It can’t be just any hangover cure, so I need to double-check it.” I followed him out.

“Red really is incredible,” I could hear Yarandrala murmur behind me.

To diagnose someone with encephalitis, you needed an inherent skill from a specialist blessing that dealt with diseases, such as Doctor, which would mean taking a skill that had no bearing on combat. And even someone with the Doctor blessing who took the standard sorts of skills generally wouldn’t be able to diagnose it until the patient reached a stage of confusion and sensory dysfunction.

We’d been lucky this time. The knowledge I had built up for Ruti’s journey had been able to help a close friend. I was overjoyed.

We would need to stop by Dr. Newman’s clinic to let him know before heading out to the mountain.

Yarandrala and I left Mogrim’s shop, and by the time we reached the foot of the mountain, it was past noon.

“Right, let’s stop by the village at the bottom before we head up.”

“What for?”

“I want to see if the sickness in Zoltan is also spreading in the nearby villages.”

I always came to gather herbs at the mountain here, and at its base was a small village of lumberjacks who provided a lot of the lumber for Zoltan—an area surrounded by expansive wetlands.

They had a lodge for adventurers climbing the mountain, but I hardly ever used it since I camped out up there. It wasn’t exactly bustling, but the people there lived peaceful, stable lives.

“It looks rather turbulent.”

We stopped to look around when we reached the entrance to the village. Like Yarandrala had said, there was a heavy mood in the air.

Did a monster show up?

“Stop there, please!”

A voice hailed us as we went to enter the village.

“Oh, is that you, Red?”

“Things look pretty grim here. Did something happen?”

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen you. Sorry, but could I ask you to take five steps back? There’s a sickness going around here, and you shouldn’t get any closer.”

“A sickness?! I’m an apothecary, so if you let me look at the people who are sick, I might be able to help!”

“We’re fine on that front. A kind traveling swordsman taught us how to cure it. We just can’t let anyone in until we’ve treated everyone who’s sick!”

A traveling swordsman taught them the cure?

“Wait a second, it might be the same as what’s going around in Zoltan. I’d like to hear more!”

“Not until everyone’s gotten better! That’s what the swordsman said! So please, go home, quickly!” the villager said forcefully. “We don’t know for sure if it can spread, even at this distance!”

From the sound of it, he wouldn’t believe us even if we said we had magical resistance to sickness.

If that traveling swordsman taught them how to cure it, then I guess it makes sense to prioritize his instructions…

At the very least, it seemed like he’d given them a treatment that had shown visible effects.

“Okay, I understand. I’ll come back later when things have calmed down.”

“Thanks. Sorry.”

Giving up, we turned around and left.

“Yarandrala, how did the village seem?” I asked once we were far enough away.

Yarandrala could borrow the strength of plants, so in a place like this surrounded by nature, she had easily been able to poke around the village without anyone noticing.

“There are four people in bed with the sickness. I couldn’t confirm it in great detail, but the symptoms appeared to be the same as what’s going around in Zoltan. However, none of the cases seem severe… Is there a skilled healer in that village?”

“No, the lumberjacks just used the herbs from the mountain without preparing them at all. They shouldn’t have a healer.”

“That’s strange… Here.” Yarandrala handed me a tree leaf furled up to hold a gray powder. “I borrowed a pinch of it. This doesn’t look like the sort of medicine an amateur could make, does it?”

“I don’t have a skill that can analyze it, so I don’t know what the medicine does, but it was definitely made by someone who knows how to compound medicines.”

It wouldn’t have ended up like this just by crushing and blending leaves; it would have required either an inherent skill or specialist knowledge.

“I don’t think there’s any question this is the medicine brought in by the traveling swordsman they mentioned.”

A traveling swordsman, who knew the treatment for a disease neither Yarandrala nor I had ever heard of, had just happened to appear in this village nowhere near the road connecting Zoltan to its neighboring country? …It was completely bizarre.

“Should we report it to the Adventurers Guild? Galatine will do a good job of handling it.”

Galatine was a talented man high up in the Adventurers Guild. He would put together a team of people with blessings that could deal with diseases to investigate.

“We can investigate this medicine when we get back to Zoltan, too. I can hand it over to Dr. Newman to analyze.”

There were plenty of skilled people in Zoltan. I knew that well from my time living here.

…That’s about all I can do for now.

“All right, we can leave the rest for the people in Zoltan to deal with, and I’ll do what I can as an apothecary.”

“Yeah… I also need to tell you about my trip—and about why I left in the first place.”

That’s right. This disease was concerning, but so was the nature of Ruti’s New Truth blessing. And Yarandrala had brought back a fragment of that answer.

After climbing the mountain for about an hour, we arrived at an area thick with medicinal plants.

“There are chimeras around here,” I said to Yarandrala. “I doubt they’ll be much of a problem for you, but best to keep an eye out.”

“Come to think of it, there’s also those ancient elf…no, ancient human ruins around here. It hasn’t even been that long, but it feels almost nostalgic.”

The day we’d gone to explore those ruins, Yarandrala and I had faced off against Demis, who’d taken possession of Van the Hero through his blessing.

“I can’t believe he beat me and I wasn’t able to do anything at all,” Yarandrala said.

“I only blocked one attack, and I was slammed into the ceiling and out of action. God sure is strong.”

“I mean, of course.”

We looked at each other and smiled. Even that hopeless battle had become a memory we could fondly look back on.

“It’s a shame I was unconscious and didn’t get to see you gallantly strike down Demis, Red.”

“I never want to go through something like that again.”

Thinking about it rationally, the fact that I had trusted my wildly optimistic theory and sealed my own blessing so I could fight with the power of the sacred sword still gave me goose bumps.

“Thanks to that, I was able to talk with the first Hero, though… It really was a surreal experience.”

The first Hero, an Asura, had said New Truth was both the power of people and the true demon lord, and that he had challenged the strength of humans.

“Before the Hero blessing was created, the true Hero challenged the true demon lord, who is unrelated to the Demon Lord blessing… So this current battle between the ‘good’ Hero and the ‘evil’ demon lord is all just a farce?”

“Pretty much,” Yarandrala said. “Should we take a break before looking for medicinal plants so I can tell you what I know?”

“Sure. In that case, why don’t we set up camp first?”

The plan was to gather a generous supply of medicinal herbs up until noon tomorrow. With Yarandrala’s help, I should be able to collect quite a lot.

The small tent I used when I came out here alone would be big enough for the two of us. It was so small we couldn’t even put our bags inside, but it would protect us from rain falling from the sky and insects crawling up from the ground. It wasn’t cold enough for snow, either, so we would be warm enough in simple sleeping bags.

“There’s no trace of anyone around us,” Yarandrala said.

This area was chimera territory, so even adventurers didn’t come here. There was no need to worry about anyone overhearing us.

We started talking as we worked.

“So what did you find out about New Truth?”

“Right. Sage Lilith, who later married the previous Hero, investigated the Hero and Demon Lord blessings during their journey to defeat the demon lord. After the demon lord was slain, she bore the Hero’s son and effectively became the ruler of the world. She was a great woman of unparalleled knowledge and skill.”

The countries of the continent of Avalon had been destroyed in the war with the previous demon lord. Sage Lilith had used that chaos to unite humanity and found the first kingdom, Gaiapolis. Officially, it had been ruled by the son born to Lilith and the previous Hero, but Lilith had been the one actually governing it.

With the demon lord gone, she had ruled the world.

“Lilith also knew the history of the ancient humans and recorded that the true holy sword lay in Zoltan.”

“Incredible… But why were there no official records of it, then?”

“Not only did she not leave any official records, she sealed her notes away with the body of the previous Hero.”

“Did she judge it to be information that other people shouldn’t know?”

We finished making camp in no time. We were only staying the one night, so we had kept our gear to a minimum. Sitting on the ground, we took out a thermos of tea and some ration cookies.

“So what was the knowledge Lilith sealed away?”

“As you already know, the first Hero was an Asura who didn’t have a blessing. The Hero blessing was constructed by Demis using the captured soul of that first Hero.”

“Yeah, he told me that when I held the sword.”

“If Lilith’s research matches what the first Hero said, then that lends credence to the rest of what I found.”

“True…”

Yarandrala still seemed a bit unsure about whether she should go on.

“Apparently, Demis is trying to get other souls to reach the same ‘light’ the first Hero’s soul achieved. He thought by recreating the way the first Hero had lived, the souls of later heroes would be able to achieve that light.”

“And he instigated wars spanning the entire world how many times now just to achieve that?”

No matter what, I just couldn’t bring myself to like Demis.

“I feel the same way you do,” Yarandrala said, biting into one of the cookies.

I let out a breath and slowly unclenched my hands, which I’d formed into fists while listening to her.

“So if the Hero blessing is a copy of the first Hero, then where do you think the Demon Lord blessing came from?”

“The logical guess would be from the demon lord the first Hero fought…which would make the Demon Lord blessing a copy of the human who possessed the power of New Truth…”

More accurately, the first Hero had said New Truth was a part of the demon lord’s power. There must be other requirements to becoming the demon lord, though.

“That is the reasonable answer. However, Lilith’s conclusion was that the Demon Lord blessing was made from something other than that demon lord.”

“It was made from something else…? But if the goal of the Hero blessing is to recreate the way the first Hero lived, it wouldn’t be able to do that unless its opposite, the Demon Lord blessing, was the demon lord he fought against, right?”

“That’s right. In order to recreate the first Hero’s life, the Demon Lord blessing should also recreate the evil he fought. And yet, Demis did not do that… Why?”

“Maybe it wasn’t possible to recreate it. Or maybe that demon lord was too powerful, and the possibility that the Hero blessing would be defeated too great.”

“No. According to Lilith, Demis should be theoretically omnipotent within the world he himself created. He would be able to create a weakened version of the demon lord capable of serving as an enemy to the Hero blessing.”

“In that case…”

I thought of something Ruti had told me, that Shisandan had said to her.

“How ironic that the blessing designed to prevent this very sort of situation ended up fostering the mental fortitude needed to endure its impulses.”

Because of their ability to resurrect, Asuras were effectively immortal and ageless. They had been present when the demon lord had ruled the world, when the first Hero had been victorious and captured by God, and when he had been warped into becoming the Hero blessing.

Although he’d witnessed it, that didn’t automatically make Shisandan right; however, there was meaning behind his words.

“Did he do it because he was afraid recreating the demon lord through a blessing would risk the birth of a true demon lord?”

“I knew you’d figure it out. That’s the same conclusion Lilith reached.”

If the demon lord was a being even the creator god Almighty Demis perceived as a threat, then that would explain why he hadn’t recreated it.

“In the legends of the Hero, Demis merely provides the blessings and doesn’t intervene in the battle between good and evil. The one exception is his giving the Sacred Avenger to the first Hero. Unlike the demons that God gave the role of evil, the ultimate evil—the true demon lord—was a match for the one true God.”

“…The first Hero said the demon lord was a being born from humans, but can people really surpass God?”

“Mmm… Naturally, I don’t really know the answer to that, either. We just have to accept it, though. Humans wouldn’t even be able to defeat the chimeras here without their blessings, so it’s unthinkable to us that they could surpass divinity. Yet history is telling us they did.”

I had borrowed the strength of the first Hero in order to fight Demis. However, he had been limited by the capabilities of the Hero blessing and Van’s physical form, and he’d only been able to wield a fraction of his power. I could claim to have struck a blow against God, but that was likely nothing more than a pinprick to Demis.

“No, that doesn’t matter right now. The important thing is how this affects Ruti.”

These were all truths that could change the world, but what mattered to us was how it affected Ruti, who had awakened to New Truth.

“…Yes, the main issue.” Yarandrala exhaled, and her expression grew serious. “The demon lord is born from people’s hearts… The demon lord is humanity.”

“It’s humanity?”

“The Hero blessing robs people of their humanity, and its opposite, Demon Lord, is humanity itself. In Ruti’s case, I think she awoke to it in anger and hatred at having someone precious to her—you—stolen away.”

“Even if it manifested itself as anger, it was a feeling born out of love for another person. I don’t really think that’s an evil emotion.”

“Right. And there’s the rub.”

“So distancing Ruti from becoming the demon lord is also going to distance her from her humanity?”

That was why Yarandrala had been so hesitant to talk about this.

If that were the case…there wasn’t anything I could do. It would mean robbing Ruti of the happiness she had finally found. I couldn’t take that from her, and I wouldn’t allow anyone else to try, either.

“That was the conclusion I came to as well,” Yarandrala said. “We can’t do anything other than believe in Ruti.”

I see… So that’s why even hearing about New Truth, the threat he once faced, the first Hero only said not to be afraid.

“…In that case, we don’t need to worry. Ruti has lots of friends around her now. Friends she can laugh and smile with. There’s no way the demon lord will be born from such a happy scene.”

“Right.” Yarandrala’s mood shifted, and she broke into a cheerful smile.

In the end, nothing had changed. Ruti would live a quiet, happy life here in Zoltan, and I wouldn’t let anyone complain about it.

“Brave hero, live in happiness.”

Only now did I understand the meaning and warmth behind those words the first Hero had left me with.

After we finished taking a break, Yarandrala and I split up to gather plants.

“There really are so many medicinal plants in this area,” I mused to myself.

The wood elves had once lived in the area around Zoltan. They had cultivated the soil and introduced various useful plants, and the humans who’d settled here had benefited from that bounty even after the wood elves had been wiped out.

“But wood elves hated ancient human ruins, and they were trying to hide the fact that the holy sword was sealed away in the ruins here. So why did they cultivate the land in this area?”

Maybe it was because we’d just been talking about the past, but something was bothering me that ordinarily wouldn’t catch my attention.

If the wood elves had cultivated the land around here, then they must have used it for agriculture—though that had a different meaning to them than it did to humans. To wood elves, agriculture meant growing whatever they needed while keeping the forest in its natural state. They probably hadn’t even needed to do any daily upkeep and had instead just relied on the rain and wind. Regardless, they would have needed to work it to sow and reap their crops.

…So would they have had farmlands next to a hidden ruin?

“Well, the medicinal plants here are great, so even if it seems strange, it is what it is.”

I had never even met a wood elf, so I guessed maybe I couldn’t understand them no matter how hard I thought about it.

Sheesh, I really am a bit shaken.

At times like these, I had a bad habit of thinking about things entirely unrelated to the situation.

“Now that I think about it, these flowers weren’t here last year… What are these peach-colored blossoms? Some flowers take a few years to bloom, and there aren’t so many that they’re driving away the other plants, so it doesn’t seem like something to worry about.”

These pink flowers had gradually increased in number during the fall. I had thought they’d wither in winter, but they showed no signs of fading.

“I don’t know this flower. According to my Survival skill, they aren’t poisonous, but nor are they edible. That’s pretty similar to most other flowers, though…”

I turned over a petal to look at the underside of it.

“This one also has what looks like little bits of mold attached to it.”

That was a distinctive trait of this flower; there were always little bits of some kind of fungal-like growth on the backs of the petals. It definitely wasn’t pollen, but with only common skills at my command, I couldn’t investigate further.

“I’m done gathering things here… Guess I’ll move to another area.”

I walked a little way northwest. In terms of direction, I was going up the mountain, but descending. With my Survival skill, I could tell my bearing and general position, but walking around on a mountain without any blessing skills to rely on could make you really lost, really fast.

“Hm?”

I felt a presence.

Something’s watching me.

I put my hand on the hilt of the bronze sword at my hip.

“…Oh, it’s just you?”

A large, slow-moving shadow peeked its head out from among the trees. It had a lion’s body and the heads of a goat and a dragon on its shoulders—a chimera. This one often came to watch me while I was gathering herbs and plants. Sometimes, it would point me to places where plants were growing, and I’d juggle or do magic tricks when I was taking a break, making its eyes go wide with surprise. It had a bit of an unusual personality.

But today, it looked different from usual.

“Did something happen?”

All six of its eyes looked at me, pleading yet serious. It walked over beside me and gently nudged my back.

“There’s somewhere you want me to go?”

“Baaa,” the goat’s head bleated weakly.

It seemed there was some kind of serious problem it needed help with.

“Got it. Let’s go, then.”

I started running, and the chimera dashed out ahead to lead the way. After running for about ten minutes through the trees, we reached the reason why the chimera wanted help.

“Grrr…”

A wounded chimera was lying hidden in the undergrowth.

“It’s hurt… This is from a sword.”

There were monsters like goblins that used swords…but this had probably been done by an adventurer.

Chimeras were hostile toward people. They had only stopped being aggressive toward me after I’d fought them once and demonstrated my superiority by killing several of them. This chimera had probably attacked an adventurer. Even if it hadn’t, it wasn’t unusual for adventurers to attack a chimera preemptively if they saw one. With the beast’s vitality, one of the potions I had with me would be more than enough to heal it. But should I really save a monster that attacked people…?

“Here, drink this potion.”

I took out the small bottle, held it to the chimera’s mouth, and slowly helped it drink.

“Rawr…!”

The dragon head of the chimera that had guided me here let out a happy growl.

“You don’t need to worry… This is your partner, right?”

“Rawrawr!”

The chimeras here didn’t move far away from their territory, so there was zero chance it would cause any harm to the village at the base of the mountain. If someone was going to get hurt, it would be an adventurer who came here…but there were dozens of chimeras living on the mountain, so it wasn’t going to change much if I helped this one.

What mattered most of all was that, for the sake of its partner, this chimera had worked up the courage to ask me for help. And seeing how happily it was nuzzled up to its partner now…I couldn’t help but feel glad I’d helped.

“Oh? You’re saving a monster?”

“Who are you?!”

A man was standing around twenty paces away. He was muscular, with black hair and sharp features. A sword with a gentle curve, likely influenced by the katanas from the Jade Kingdom, hung at his waist.

…I didn’t notice him at all until he said something.

“Grrrrrr…!!” The monster growled menacingly as it stepped back.

“I see. So you must be the one who fought this chimera,” I said to the man.

I moved in front of the beast, protecting it.

“The chimera doesn’t want to fight anymore, so will you please just let it go?”

“Chimeras are not the types of monsters to hoard treasure,” the man said. “There isn’t much to be gained from killing them… So why do you protect them? Pacifism isn’t a common philosophy in this world.”

“Because it asked me for help.”

This swordsman… He’s strong.

I couldn’t determine his blessing yet, but the pressure I felt facing him was like going up against Danan.

The man carefully examined my face. His arms were hanging loose and unthreateningly, but his sword was designed for quick-draw techniques. I would be at a disadvantage if we drew at the same time.

“What would you do if I told you to get out of my way?” he asked.

“Well, that’d be a problem.”

“Haha…”

The swordsman leaped toward me, drawing his sword with lightning speed.

CLAAANG!!!!!!

The clash of metal echoed around the mountain.

“Oh, wow!”

The swordsman looked astonished.

I had stopped his deadly attack with the hilt and guard of my bronze sword—the Bahamut-style cross-guard reversal. It was a technique where you grasped the blade of your sword and caught the oncoming slash between the guard and the hilt. I had made up for the difference in draw speed by only moving my sword as little as possible.

“Splendid!” the swordsman declared loudly. “My apologies. You gave off the impression of being quite skilled standing there, so I felt the urge to test you.”

“Thanks, I suppose.”

That was an absurdly fast strike… I can still feel the chill down my back.

The man who’d attacked me flashed his teeth in a wide, joyful smile…but it was a real pain having people just attack me all of a sudden.

You came across swordsmen like him every now and then, and I always wondered how they’d react if they killed someone in the heat of the moment attacking like that.

…I get the feeling they’d just give a wry smile and move on.

“You’ve already done enough damage, so will you sheathe your blade?”

“Very well. In deference to you, I shall let these chimeras go.”

We both put our swords away at the same time. I nodded to the chimeras, and they swiftly fled deeper into the mountain.

“Haah.”

I let out a breath. I’d run into another crazy strong swordsman here.

Who in the world is he?

“Today is a good day, encountering a brave man such as yourself out here!” the man said.

“It’s a calamitous day for me, having someone suddenly draw their sword on me.”

I had a feeling it would be troublesome if I got involved with this man, but there was no way a swordsman like him was walking around a mountain deep on the frontier for no reason.

“I’m an apothecary in Zoltan. I came here to gather herbs and plants to make medicine. What brings you to such a remote place?”

“I am investigating the source of a disease that’s spreading in the village at the base of the mountain.”

“So you must be the traveling swordsman the villager there mentioned.”

“Did you stop at the village?”

“Not really, I was turned back at the entrance. Though they did tell me a traveling swordsman knew the treatment for the disease and had shared it with them.”

“I see. That makes things easier. An incredibly dangerous disease has been let loose on this mountain. It must be stopped here.”

“You’re trying to stop it here? Is that even possible?”

He just said it was “let loose” here… So is this mountain the source of it?

“If you are an apothecary, then you should be well-versed in diseases.”

“Not as much as an actual doctor, and my blessing isn’t particularly related to medicine, either.”

“Hmph.” For some reason, a momentary flicker of annoyance crossed the swordsman’s face. “Having crossed blades with you, I can tell you are incredibly skilled. If you are that good with a sword, then I can only assume you must also be a very talented apothecary.”

“What do sword skills have to do with being an apothecary?”

“It is about spirit.”

He was a strange man. Even though we’d clashed, I still couldn’t discern his blessing.

“…Thanks. Then allow me to ask you a question, as an apothecary.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Could you tell me about this disease and its treatment? It’s also spreading in other villages, so sealing off the village at the base of the mountain won’t be enough to stop it.”

“I’m aware. There is a cure, but not enough of it.”

“How is it made?”

“The ingredients include a plant that is already extinct. There are some still preserved in the nearby ruins, but providing the cure to everyone infected is unrealistic.”

“You shared a medicine that precious with the villagers?!”

“I am healthy, and they were sick… It’s only natural, isn’t it?” the swordsman answered bluntly. “Before discussing the medicine, however, it would probably make more sense to discuss the nature of the disease.”

“True. Please, tell me. I’ve examined it, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen this disease.”

“It is an ancient disease, so it is only natural you would not know it.”

“An ancient disease?”

“You know of the ancient ruins on this mountain here? Somehow, a disease that was being preserved inside them leaked out.”

During the battle with Demis, the ancient human ruins had used up the last of their energy and stopped functioning. Was that the cause of all this? …But it had been over half a year since then. Why was the disease spreading now?

“Are those pink flowers the cause?”

“They are, indeed! Your skills of perception are outstanding!” the swordsman exclaimed loudly again. “It is an ancient flower known as Asura crown. The flower itself isn’t poisonous; rather, the fungus that parasitizes it is the source of the disease.”

My bad feeling earlier had been right on the money. The reason the disease hadn’t spread immediately after the ruins had stopped functioning was because it had taken time for the flowers to spread.

“The flowers are growing across a considerable area of the mountain, though,” I said. “It will be difficult to exterminate them all.”

“We have no other choice. That is why we have split up to investigate.”

“Did the people who preserved this flower not have a measure in place to deal with it if it started to spread?”

“It’s worth investigating the possibility, however, so far, no solution has been found to deal with it other than the cure.”

That wasn’t just something he’d been told—he knew it firsthand.

“There are monsters on this mountain, so the best thing to do would be to inform the Adventurers Guild and gather people to help…but it would be difficult to get together enough people with blessings resistant to disease.”

“You should not bother with that,” the man replied. “This disease penetrates blessing resistances.”

“It penetrates resistances?! Then was it artificially created using magic?!”

Naturally occurring diseases, no matter how infectious, couldn’t penetrate the resistances and immunities of blessings. Even weak resistance at skill level 1 could stop infection from something as dangerous as pneumonic plague by 90 percent, and an intermediate resistance could prevent it entirely. Stronger resistances were only needed for diseases imbued with magic.

“Leave the flower to me,” the man said. “You should focus on caring for the sick as an apothecary.”

“…I see. All right. I don’t know anything about this ‘Asura crown,’ so it probably is best I leave it to you.”

We’d been talking for a little while, so the chimeras had probably gotten far enough away by now.

“In that case, I’ll go back to gathering plants… So far, we’ve been giving patients medicine to reduce the fever and pain, something to restore their energy, and a hangover cure to improve water circulation in their bodies. There shouldn’t be any problems with that, right?”

“It seems you’ve got a good grasp on it. Additionally, the fungus that has grown in patients’ bodies can spread through the air while they are symptomatic, so you should make sure to open windows while caring for them.”

“Got it. I’ll do my duty as an apothecary.”

“Yes. We shall both carry out our roles.”

And with that, the conversation came to a close, and I left.

After walking a short distance away…

“So are you going to show yourself?” I called out to the presence in the trees.

“He is a little too bold, wouldn’t you agree?”

A young man with dark skin and a gentle expression stepped out.

It was a familiar face.

“You showing up here is as good as announcing that swordsman is the Demon Lord Taraxon. Isn’t it…Shisandan?”

Shisandan was a general of the demon lord’s armies, who we’d once fought. It was just as Yarandrala had said—the demon lord and Shisandan were traveling across this continent as humans.

“Don’t play coy. You were already convinced he was Lord Taraxon, weren’t you?”

“I suppose… Talk about shameless, though. If you hadn’t gone out of your way to use the names Taraxon and Bui, no one would’ve been the wiser.”

“Hiding one’s name and scurrying around in the shadows is not how a hero conducts themself. Besides, I respect this man named Bui. He was noble and beloved by all.”

“And yet you ate him.”

“Yes, I did. This form was convenient for blending in amongst humans… Why does that anger you, Gideon? You never met Bui, did you?”

“It’s just irritating seeing you look like that while talking about someone you killed.”

“Haha, life and death are but small parts of an infinite journey. It is no different than day becoming night or night becoming day.”

I’d heard something similar before. From Demis.

“You Asura fight against Demis, but your values aren’t so different.”

“…Hmmm.”

Shisandan didn’t seem to have expected that response, but I continued questioning him, unconcerned.

“Is your goal the Sacred Avenger?”

“I suppose there’s no point in hiding it with you. Yes, you are correct.”

“I know an Asura was the original Hero, but what are you planning to do if you get the sword now? The war’s over.”

“We understand that, of course. Our battle under the banner of the demon lord has ended in defeat, so now we rise to challenge Demis as rightful heroes.”

“If you want to fight Demis, then go right ahead… But if you’re going to get us caught up in it again, I won’t hand over the sword!”

“…For now, we should both prioritize dealing with this sickness.”

“Did you really cure the sickness? As far as I’m concerned, the possibility remains that you were the ones who brought it here.”

“Of course not. It is a disease that is dangerous even to Asura. We cannot stay safe from it without magic, either.”

We stared each other down for a few more seconds.

Then…

“Standing around like this is a waste of time.”

“Yes, I agree.”

We turned away at the same time and walked off in opposite directions.

The evening of the following day, Torahime, Habotan, Ruti, Tisse, Rit, and I all gathered at the apothecary.

“I cannot believe the demon lord had already reached Zoltan.”

Torahime was shocked. Understandably so.

“What of Ms. Yarandrala?” Habotan asked.

“When she heard the disease could penetrate resistances from blessings, Yarandrala decided to go somewhere else to wait and see if she had already been infected.”

“Penetrating resistances from blessings… Th-then should this one do the same?!”

“You’re a demon, not a human, so you’ll be fine.”

“Oh, that is true!”

Habotan breathed a genuine sigh of relief.

This demon lord is pretty adorable.

“Are you okay, Big Brother?”

“Rit and I have been borrowing Yarandrala’s earrings that have a resistance to sickness, so we’re fine. Your Healing Hands would probably be able to cure it, but there’s a chance even the Hero blessing’s immunities might not be able to prevent infection, so be careful.”

“I will.”

A disease that could even infect the Hero… I never would have thought there was something like that in the world.

“Even if she were infected, with Ruti’s vitality, I imagine she would recover before there were even any symptoms…,” Torahime said. “Red, please tell me more about Demon Lord Taraxon’s movements.”

I nodded, then began my explanation.

“The demon lord is apparently after the Sacred Avenger. They didn’t seem to be aware that either you or Habotan are here, and they weren’t searching for you… Perhaps with the demon lord’s armies shattered, there isn’t a reason to capture Habotan anymore.”

“I cannot say without further information, however if the demon lord has come here, then it is safe to assume his armies in the dark continent have also been shattered. The secret technique that allows Asura to resurrect cannot function smoothly without the presence of Taraxon, the Asura king, so there is no telling when or where they might revive. It could be anywhere from several years to several decades from now.”

“I see. I’d always wondered how the demons of the dark continent had been able to get the upper hand over ageless, immortal Asura, but I guess it isn’t quite so unbeatable an ability without the Asura king.”

Taraxon had defeated the rightful demon lord and stolen his power, but in almost every age in the past, Asura had been under the thumb of that very same power. In the former demon lord’s armies, they had been treated as outsiders akin to orcs and monsters.

“After destroying the country he ruled, no doubt he is trying to rebuild the demon lord’s armies with the power of the Hero’s artifacts.” Torahime scoffed. “He’s absolutely shameless.”

“You think he wants to use the Hero’s power for that…?”

Something about it felt off. Did that really sound like something the Taraxon I had met would do? I’d only spoken a little with him…but he had a strong spirit that reminded me of the first Hero.

“Um.” Tisse raised her hand once we’d settled down from Torahime’s comment. “Why is the demon lord attempting to cure people afflicted by the sickness?”

“Shisandan said it was dangerous even to Asura, and he didn’t seem to be lying.”

“Can one really read the expressions of monsters capable of transforming into humans? I fail to see their motives in curing the disease when they could have simply taken the sword and left Zoltan right away.”

Tisse’s words made sense.

“They didn’t let their guards down, but the demon lord and Shisandan both showed themselves to me. Their goal in doing that was to convey an idea of mutual noninterference.”

“Do you not think their goal was simply to keep you, a potential obstacle to their plan, away?”

Another reasonable interpretation.

“The flowers they called Asura crown spread for reasons entirely unrelated to their actions. I can’t imagine that was a part of the demon lord’s plan.”

“Well, yes, that is true…” Tisse still seemed concerned.

“I understand how you feel, Tisse, but we don’t know how to deal with the illness spreading. The demon lord’s intentions are unclear, but right now, he’s the only one who knows anything about this disease.”

“I have never seen a disease like this on the dark continent, either,” added Torahime. “Granted, I am not a doctor, so I do not know every disease.”

“But as one of the top commanders of the demon lord’s army, you would at least know if there was an illness going around.”

“True. The demon lord’s armies are not only made up of demons but also include humans from the dark continent. There would be a report of any disease spreading.”

Yet only Taraxon and Shisandan knew anything specific about this disease.

“I’ll fight as well, if it comes to that. It’ll be all right,” Ruti reassured Tisse. “But the Demon Lord Taraxon’s forces didn’t wage war because of a hatred for humanity, or because they wanted more land, or to obey their Divine Blessings. We’re enemies, which is exactly why we need to understand Taraxon to figure out why we’re fighting.”

“Understand him, huh?”

Torahime and Habotan closed their eyes and seemed to delve into their memories.

“Asura have opposed Demis and demons since long, long ago, when the Asura Hero’s soul was stolen. But their struggles always ended in defeat. They were given the demeaning name ‘Asura demons’ to imply they were merely a subspecies of demons, and they were forced to serve as common soldiers in the demon lord’s armies.”

Demon was a term used to denote a race whose members all possessed the same blessing. Asura had no blessing, so they didn’t actually fit that classification, but they were still considered a subspecies because they obeyed demons.

That said…if they had the same sense of justice as the first Hero, I was sure they were reluctant to serve as a tool for evil.

“So Taraxon defeated the demon lord and stole his power, then took up that mantle as an evil ruler fighting against humanity…? That’s kind of strange.”

“I do not know,” Torahime said, her arms crossed as she thought.

It was something I’d always wondered about. We still didn’t really understand Asura, the enemies of God.

“As Big Brother said, we need to stay alert and not let our guards down. There’s still too much we don’t know about the enemy to fight them,” Ruti said, settling the discussion.

She really is reliable.

“Um, what about the sword?” Habotan asked.

“…Actually, I’ve hidden the sword somewhere already,” I told them.

“You have? Really?!”

“Yeah. With the ruins nonfunctional, leaving it there would have been like leaving it out in the open. Shisandan tried taking it once already, so I hid it.”

“Incredible, Mr. Red. Then everything will be fine!”

That was the reason I was feeling a bit calmer about this: I could decide for myself whether or not to give the sword to Demon Lord Taraxon.

Well, it is a big decision for the whole world.

It was probably something for Torahime and Habotan, or heroes like Van and the others who’d saved the world, to decide…

“Everyone’s gone home,” I said to Rit, who was still sitting at the table.

“So Shisandan is here in Zoltan.”

“Yeah… We spoke, and there’s no mistaking it’s him.”

Rit stared at her hands on her knees.

Shisandan was her sworn enemy, the one who had killed her master, Gaius. He had also wrought such terrible damage to Loggervia as a general of the demon lord’s armies.

“That bastard…!”

Rit’s voice trembled.

He had taken someone precious to her. I couldn’t understand everything she was feeling, though, since I wasn’t from Loggervia.

I gently hugged her from behind.

“I said what I thought while everyone was here…but if you can’t forgive Shisandan, then I’ll fight with you when the time comes. Your feelings are important to me.”

“Thank you, Red…”

Rit’s tension dissipated, and she put her hand over mine.

“Even if they die, Asura will revive,” she said. “But the pain and loss they experience in death are real.”

“Yeah. It isn’t as if they just never died. Where for us, we’re reincarnated as different beings after we die, they just revive as their same selves.”

“That being the case…I already got my revenge for Master in Loggervia. I know I killed Shisandan there.”

“You sure did. I’m sure his head from back then is still lying beneath the ground in Loggervia.”

That had happened when I had still been the knight Gideon and Rit had been the hero of Loggervia. It was a memory of a bloody wind raging across a battlefield.

“Then it’s fine. I’ve taken my vengeance.”

“Really…?”

Rit turned her head and kissed me softly on the cheek.

“It’s because you’re here for me that I can just be Rit.”

“It’s the same for me.”

“Ehehe… Still!” Rit stood up, her usual cheerful tone back. “It’s different if he comes for us! I’ll mince him up until he never wants to revive again!”

“Haha, well, there’s nothing else for it if he makes the first move. He got the drop on us last time, but this time we’ll smash him with our teamwork.”

“Our teamwork’s even better now that we’re about to get married!”

We both chuckled at that. Rit turned to face me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“You were so far away last night, so I’m not letting you leave my side tonight,” Rit whispered in my ear. She blushed and buried her face in my chest.

Whether the demon lord came or not, our blissful life remained untroubled.

If he tried to rob us of it…I wouldn’t show him any mercy.

The next day, Red & Rit’s Apothecary was incredibly busy right from the morning. Lots of people came to buy medicine for family members who’d fallen sick, but even more came to buy Loggervian heaters, our winter bestseller, as today was the coldest day of the season.

“Three heaters, please,” one man said, setting them down on the counter.

“Sorry, but we’re only selling one per person today.”

“What? Why?!”

“Yesterday, we were so busy making medicine for the disease going around Zoltan, we didn’t have time to get more of the ingredients for the hand warmers.”

“Really? But it’s so cold today, me and the guys were gonna skip work and drink at the bar.”

Skipping work because of the cold to go and hang out at the bar? Zoltan really was as lazy as ever.

“A bar’s better than being outside, isn’t it? You’ll be okay with one.”

“Fine, I guess. Talking here’s a waste of time, so I’m gonna go.”

“A waste of your time…slacking off work to go to the bar?”

“Exactly. I made that free time for myself by slacking off work.”

All I could do was grimace as he shamelessly admitted it.

Once the morning rush had passed…

“People here are hopeless.”

“Right?!”

Torahime and Rit, who were organizing inventory in the back of the shop, came out with exasperated looks on their faces. That man hadn’t been the only customer to want heaters so they could skip out on work to enjoy themselves, and the two of them had apparently gotten fed up listening to it.

Actually, no. Rit looked like she was enjoying it a bit. She had definitely adapted to the Zoltan mentality that slacking off wasn’t such a bad thing.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself, Red,” Torahime said, glancing at me.

Apparently, I had the same sort of expression on my face as Rit.

“The disease is really starting to spread. Your medicines are flying off the shelves.”

It was the third day since Torahime had watched the store for us, and the illness was enveloping Zoltan.

“It is fortunate that the disease is generally not life-threatening… However, two people have died.”

“There have been casualties…?”

“It is not a rumor; I know it from the water. The deceased were both children who had not awakened to their Divine Blessings. They were also naturally frail of constitution.”

Torahime had been keeping a watchful eye through the water, wary of Taraxon. In the process, it seemed like she’d also been detecting the movements of the people in Zoltan.

“I see…”

“Still, it is strange that an illness able to penetrate a blessing’s resistance is so effectively blocked by the physical enhancements bestowed by blessings. Whether natural or derived from a Divine Blessing, those who possess sufficient vitality recover with two or three days of rest without any worsening conditions. It seems rather gentle for a disease created using ancient magic.”

“Can you really call it gentle when people have died? …Though I get what you’re saying.”

If it was man-made, then it had presumably been created with a goal in mind—and for something like a disease, the only possible use was as a weapon. Even nowadays, particularly cruel generals sieging cities did things like hurl the corpses of soldiers or even animals into a fortress to cause the spread of disease.

“But this wouldn’t be enough to cause a castle to fall.”

“No.” Torahime shook her head, not understanding, either. “Although the ancients were human, it would be fair to say they were almost a completely different race from humanity now. There are very few things about them I do understand.”

Torahime had lived an incredibly long time, but even she hadn’t been around during the age of ancient humans. At that time, the balance of power had been completely broken; ancient humans had been overwhelmingly superior, so demons had blended into ancient human society and operated behind the scenes. The demons from back then had also had completely different values than they did now.

The bell rang, and we stopped talking and looked toward the door.

“Good morning, Big Brother.”

“Good morning, Ruti.”

It was Ruti, carrying an empty basket on her back.

“Back from deliveries?”

“Mhm. But my plantation is completely out of stock now.”

“Really…?”

“We can’t make any more medicinal chikuwa bread, either…”

“Ah, because that can also be used to make painkillers.”

The medicinal herb in Ruti’s chikuwa bread provided a weak analgesic effect without any side effects, so there were people who needed it to make up for the shortage of normal painkillers. It was also true that taking medicine gave a certain peace of mind that could have an effect easing fevers and pain.

“Even the Hero can’t defeat the disease.”

“Yeah.”

The Hero blessing had the power to heal individuals, but it couldn’t cure a disease spreading through a whole town.

“Still, the medicinal plants you’ve grown and cared for have helped many people. You’ve even managed to reach people the Hero wouldn’t be able to save.”

With Healing Hands, Ruti could cure anyone she touched. However, that also meant she couldn’t save anyone beyond her reach. There were people who had been saved by Ruti now who she only ever would have been able to help because she’d quit as the Hero.

“Thank you, Big Brother.” Ruti smiled, looking slightly relieved. “But things have settled down at the plantation now. We’ve harvested everything that looked ready, so we can’t do anything but tend to the next crop for a little while.”

“It wasn’t long ago you were worrying about not having enough demand.”

“I know. It’s a very complicated feeling.”

“Well, it is a job where sales go up when people are in trouble.”

It was an occupational hazard, not being able to be completely happy when business was booming.

“Anyway, with things having calmed down there, I went to check on Yarandrala,” Ruti said.

“You did? I was thinking of going to check on her once we were done here… Is she doing well?”

“Mhm. Her symptoms were mild. There’s still a chance she could infect others, though, so she said she’s going to stay isolated until her magic can’t detect it anymore.”

“Okay… I was thinking of taking her something.”

“She asked me to tell you that you don’t need to come.”

“I…see.”

Since it wasn’t serious, Yarandrala didn’t need someone to nurse her, and I was sure she’d figure out something to do for food.

“It’s a bit sad that she won’t let us worry about her,” Rit said, reading my mind. “Maybe we could at least slip a letter in through her window.”

“That’s a good idea.”

We could go to deliver the letter together once we’d finished work.

“By the way, Big Brother, has Harmon come yet?” Ruti asked, looking around the shop.

“Not today, but this is around the time he usually comes.”

That was the reason Torahime had come to the store as well. Yarandrala had wanted to meet him again, too, but she was sick, so there was nothing to do about that.

Harmon had settled into his work at the quarry, and he was apparently already as fast as a veteran cutting rocks with the saw.

With more people relying on him at work, it might be harder for him to easily take time off…

“I don’t think so,” Ruti said, shaking her head. “I went by the quarry and Harmon wasn’t there.”

“He wasn’t?”

“I was planning to bring him with me when I came here.”

“If he wasn’t at the quarry, then did something come up?”

“The person at the quarry said he’d left to come here.”

What? Had he taken a detour…? He’d been in the army for a long time, though, so he was pretty punctual, unlike most people in Zoltan. He’d made a promise to be here, so I doubted he would have gone somewhere on the way without a reason.

“That’s…a little concerning.”

Zoltan was certainly peaceful, but in this world dominated by Divine Blessings, the seeds of adventure were everywhere. It was possible Harmon had gotten caught up in some sort of incident. I thought it unlikely that Taraxon had made contact with him, though.

“No presence like Taraxon’s has approached Zoltan. It is impossible for such a person to slip past my senses,” Torahime said.

“Can you find Harmon’s location with that power?”

“Forgive me, but Taraxon and Shisandan’s movements are my priority, so I can only sense others to a limited extent.”

“That makes sense…”

“However, there might be important information gleaned from speaking to Harmon. I will search for him. I should have sufficient power remaining to trace his current location from where he left.”

“I’m worried about Harmon, too, so I’ll go with you. You won’t be able to fight seriously while focusing on your tracking, right?”

“Do you think there is a chance of encountering an enemy that would really require me to fight seriously?”

“Always thinking about how to make it out alive no matter what happens is what it means to be an adventurer.”

“I see… That is a notion that may be lacking in higher demons born with great power.”

Having discussed it, Torahime and I prepared to leave, when…

“Mr. Reddddd!!!”

Someone burst into the shop.

“Megria! What is it? What’re you all worked up about?”

Megria, who worked at the Adventurers Guild, had rushed in out of breath. She seemed to be in a terrible hurry and was gasping for breath.

“Are you all right? Here, have a drink.”

“Th-thank you…”

Rit hurried over with a cup of water. Megria drank it all in one gulp and took a deep breath to calm down.

“So is there some sort of urgent task you need me to do?”

“Yes, a quest we can only ask of you, Mr. Red…”

A quest only I could do? Even though Zoltan’s strongest adventurer, Ruti, was right here in the room?

“The Adventurers Guild would like to ask you to sort through the medicinal plants brought into the guild!”

“Huh?”

That was an entirely unexpected quest.

As an apothecary, I guess it wasn’t really all that strange for them to ask me, but the Adventurers Guild didn’t generally hire outsiders for temporary jobs appraising items that had been brought there. And on principle, they never asked registered adventurers like me to do any jobs that involved paying out rewards to other adventurers.

“We are aware this is not recommended, but everyone who usually handles it is currently out sick!”

“Ugh, that’s terrible.”

“We would undoubtedly fall behind if I handled it by myself, but we cannot afford to delay the quests for medicinal plants and herbs right now!”

That was true. It wasn’t an issue for me since I could gather my own ingredients, but other apothecaries didn’t have that option. Without adventurers gathering and distributing plants, there would be a shortage of medicine.

“The adventurers also understand there is currently a shortage of medicine… However, gathering medicinal plants is already a relatively low-paying quest, so if there is a delay in getting the rewards on top of that, fewer people might be willing to take it on.”

“…I see. The thing is…”

I was concerned about Harmon. What should I do…?

But while I was hesitating, Ruti confidently spoke up.

“Big Brother, Torahime and I will search for Harmon. You go to the guild, and Rit can watch the shop here.”