“Satou! Thank you! Thank you so much!”
Ringrande wrapped her arms around me, weeping as she thanked me over and over.
I heard Arisa and Mia growling off to the side. They didn’t step in to interfere, though.
“Thanks, Satou!”
“We owe ya big time!”
Rusus and Fifi joined in on the hug with Ringrande.
“I wish to thank you, too.”
Though the cool and collected archer Weeyari didn’t join in on the group hug, she gave me a small smile.
“Is your hand quite all right?”
“Yes, it’s fine—see?”
Aside from the magic circle on the glove, which had burned up from too much magic, my hand looked perfectly normal. The nails that had blackened and been removed were already regrown.
“Your Holy Tool must have protected you.”
“I’m sure it’s happy to have been of use to a great hero.”
Surely, this was an even more noble fate than being used for a party trick, especially with so many onlookers to witness it.
“We really cannot thank you enough. I shall make sure that the Saga Empire sends you a reward and commendation letter, as well as compensation for the elixir.”
Princess Mariest clutched my hand, promising to repay me on behalf of the hero’s party.
It would be rude to say I didn’t need any of that, so I just told her not to worry about it for the moment.
“What in the world is all this commotion?! I’ll have you know these are the pontiff’s private chambers!”
A high-ranking priest came running into the room, looking like a blood vessel was about to burst in his forehead. Several Temple Knights and soldiers followed close behind him.
Princess Mariest stepped forward to respond to the cardinal.
“My apologies, good cardinal. I’m afraid the hero’s life was hanging in the balance. I hope you can forgive our ill-mannered intrusion.”
“Forgive you?! Why, just because the pontiff is such a kindhearted soul—?”
“That’s quite enough, Dobbunaf.”
“Y-Your Grace!”
The Temple Knights and soldiers parted to reveal Pontiff Zarzaris himself, fresh from healing the masses outside the cathedral.
“While I cannot currently use the healing powers granted to me by the goddess, I came in hopes that I could be of aid with Holy Magic…but it appears that perhaps I am a tad too late?”
“Please allow me to express our gratitude for Your Grace’s kindness on behalf of Hayato the Hero.”
Mariest bowed her head to the amiable pontiff.
“If the hero has healed, it would be best for you to take him and leave at once—”
“Dobbunaf, you mustn’t address our guests so rudely. The hero was injured in a battle with the demon lord, mortal enemy of humankind.” The pontiff scolded the cardinal, then turned back to us. “Miss Mariest, please make yourself at home in my room until the hero is well again.”
With that, he left the room. However, since Hayato was no longer in mortal peril, Fifi and Weeyari carried him on a stretcher to his own part of the building so as not to impose.
“Loleiya, when is Hayato going to wake up?” Rusus asked.
“He’ll probably be sleeping for a while yet,” the priestess replied. “The demon lord’s curse weakened him considerably.”
“You must be tired from the battle, too, are you not? Let my ladies-in-waiting take care of things here and go get some sleep.”
Despite Princess Mariest’s proposal, not one of Hayato’s attendants was willing to leave his side, herself included.
In the end, she recognized this and suggested that everyone should at least remove their armor and get more comfortable.
“Satou, you said earlier that you came because you ‘received a divine message from the goddess Parion.’ Was it an oracle vision?” Lady Ringrande asked as she returned from changing clothes.
I nodded and explained the presumably divine vision I had.
“…Loleiya?”
Princess Mariest, who’d been listening as well, looked at the priestess Loleiya, who slowly shook her head.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that from the oracle priestesses,” she said firmly. “In the legends, Goddess Parion does appear as a young girl, but the priestesses and Hayato always describe her as an avatar of blue light. We certainly have this mysterious girl’s message to thank for Hayato’s survival, yet I cannot think that she is Goddess Parion incarnate…”
“She didn’t introduce herself as such, either. Maybe she was a fairy or spirit with the gift of oracle messages, or something like that.”
I used my “Fabrication” skill to make up a plausible story.
After all, she might be the same mystery girl who saved me during the battle with Doghead, although she seemed very different at the time.
“So, you fought a demon lord, right? What sort of demon lord was he?”
Arisa spoke up brightly, changing the subject in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“If I had to sum him up in one word…” Fifi caught onto Arisa’s intentions and responded quickly. “I’d say…slippery.”
“Huh?”
Arisa blinked in surprise at the unexpected description.
“He was always producing substitutes or sending other monsters after us and then running away,” Rusus supplied.
“He sure was strong, though, yeah? Just look what he did to my arm, and Fifi lost a few limbs at one point, too.”
“Sounds ouchiiie?”
“Nah, doesn’t hurt a bit once ya put some potion on it and close the wound.”
Rusus smiled reassuringly at Tama.
“It was a close call.” Weeyari spoke up quietly, leaning against the wall. “Without Hayato, we might’ve all been killed.”
Liza tilted her head. “I thought you said the demon lord ran away?”
“Yeah, he did,” Fifi answered. “He threw some orb at us as he left that broke open and hit Hayato with that curse.”
My map search didn’t show any demon lords; he must already have been outside the Parion Province map area.
“Was the demon lord scary, sir?”
“He looked like a cross between a huge sand-colored scorpion and a human. He was hunched over and had a really long tail.”
“Yeah, and his tail was segmented and real flexible—kept lashing out at your arms and legs from your blind spot. Gotta be real careful.”
Rusus and Fifi told Pochi and Tama about the demon lord.
My eye caught on Rusus’s severed arm as she gestured wildly.
“You aren’t going to grow it back?” I asked.
“Even Loleiya’s greater magic couldn’t fix it. Musta gotten cursed when the demon lord bit it off.”
“My eye was the same way. At some point, I’d like to see if the pontiff’s holy light can heal it. If not, that’s fine, too.”
Ringrande touched the scar that ran down from behind her eyepatch.
I hid my face and took a look with “Miasma Vision”; Ringrande’s eye and Rusus’s arm still had traces of miasma, which were fading as I watched. My still-active spirit light must have been purifying them.
“The curse may have weakened with time. Try using potions on them again.”
I gave them each a few greater potions.
Since Rusus was missing a limb, I gave her a large vial of Concentrated Nutritional Supplement Potion, too. Otherwise, she’d be temporarily weakened from the effort of healing.
“Are these advanced healing potions? We can’t waste something so valuable without even knowing if they’ll work…”
“Don’t worry, I still have at least a dozen. Please go ahead and use them.”
At my urging, Ringrande and Rusus drank down the potions.
“Nngh…!”
“Oooh…”
Ringrande pressed a hand against her covered eye, while Rusus flung herself down on the sofa and writhed in pain.
Restoring a lost limb or organ is always painful.
“It grew back! My arm grew back!”
“I can see… It’s still a little blurry, but I can see again! Oh, thank you, Satou!”
The smiling pair wrapped their arms around me.
Unlike when they were wearing armor before, this time a blissful softness pressed against my face on either side.
Maybe paradise was closer than I thought.
“Guilty.”
“Hey! Have a little modesty, will you!”
The usual iron-wall pair swept in with lightning speed.
I tried to pacify them, though I felt like I’d been kicked out of paradise.
“Guess you little shrimps are still women, huh?”
“I’m sorry, you two. Please don’t be angry—I promise we won’t try to take Satou away.”
Rusus grinned, while Miss Ringrande apologized to Arisa and Mia.
“Wonder if I should cut my leg back off and reattach it, too? Still feels kinda off.”
Looking at Rusus’s restored arm, Fifi casually made a painful-sounding suggestion.
“Did it shift a little when you reattached it before?”
“Nah, that seems fine, but sometimes it just goes kinda limp.”
I used Practical Magic to look at her limb with X-ray vision and saw what looked like a small shard of rock lodged in her knee joint. That must have been the source of the discomfort.
It might have been mistaken for part of her body when the potion fused things together.
“Shall I try and repair it?”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, I have the perfect tool for this sort of thing.”
I took out a glove embroidered with a healing rune from Storage by way of my Garage Bag.
Arisa made it for me during her lessons at the royal academy. It could heal small wounds and scrapes just by touching them a few times, making it perfect for when Pochi or Tama took a tumble and other such occasions.
“Let me see your leg, please.”
“Pervy.”
“Not like that, Mia. I’m just going to heal her knee.”
I suppose the way I phrased it at first might have sounded a little perverted.
“Eh, I don’t mind if you wanna touch my leg a little.”
Sitting on the sofa, Fifi stripped off her boot rather seductively and held her foot out toward me.
It was certainly a lovely and alluring leg, even with the scars of a hardened warrior.
“All right, I’ll begin the healing process now. Please try to relax.”
I activated my “Magic Heal” skill and began isolating the small rock shard that had attached to Fifi’s knee joint.
Once it was separated, the rest was simple. I used the telekinetic Magic Hand to grasp the shard and put it away in Storage.
“All done. Does that feel any better?”
“You’re done already?”
Fifi stood up from the sofa, bent and stretched her leg a few times, then moved between a few different battle postures experimentally.
“Damn, it’s as good as new! You’re awesome, Satou.”
Fifi pounded my back as she praised my work. It was a bit painful.
After that, I wound up having to fix Weeyari’s elbow and Loleiya’s shoulder, too. The latter was especially difficult since I had to try not to let my gaze stray to the valley of temptation.
“Will you be chasing after the demon lord once Sir Hayato wakes up?”
“More like we’ll have to start searching from square one.”
“Seems like a demon that can use teleportation is helpin’ the bastard. Not even a Saga Empire Space Magic specialist can track ’em down.”
“Space Magic…,” Arisa murmured.
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” I asked Rusus and Fifi.
“Probably somewhere in the Dens of Evil.”
“For some reason, this demon lord ain’t leavin’ the borders of Parion Province.”
“This is the third time we’ve found the demon lord. The first few times, he ran away as soon as we laid eyes on him.”
“Huh? We’ve seen ’im more than that, no?”
“The rest were all imposters,” Princess Mariest told Fifi. “I’d say we’ve seen about nine of those. They look exactly like the demon lord, but they’re all lesser or intermediate demons merged with Sandstorm Soldiers.”
“Sandstorm Soldiers are those sandy-looking guys, right?” Arisa asked.
“The very same,” Miss Ringrande responded. “Even though they’re remarkably weak, they’re still spawn of the demon lord.”
They explained that the Sandstorm Soldiers spread the demon lord’s presence throughout the Dens of Evil, making it difficult to pin down exactly which cave the demon lord was in, even with Wind or Space Magic. As such, they had to narrow it down with techniques like Divination and Miasma Measurement, then send in plenty of people to search.
“Are there that many different dens?”
“I heard there’s at least ten thousand different entrances, and those are just the ones we know about.”
Wow. No wonder there were so many small empty areas on the Parion Province map.
“That’s an awful lot. They can’t all be magic power spots…maybe they’re some kind of ruins?”
“Long ago, it’s said there was a labyrinth here called the ‘Evil God’s Prison.’”
The Evil God’s Prison?
I don’t like the sound of that name.
“I thought the Evil God was sealed in the moon?”
“Right? That’s what we said!”
“So it wasn’t just us who got the wrong idea.”
Rusus and Fifi seemed pleased about Arisa’s question.
“Wrong? How so?”
“Apparently, the name means ‘the prison the Evil God created,’ not ‘the prison that held the Evil God captive.’”
Although I didn’t say it out loud, I had the awful thought that the demon lord might be staying in Parion Province because he was trying to free something from the Evil God’s Prison.
Whether I was right or wrong, I hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with more terrible foes like the Evil God’s Spawn.
“These days, we avoid invoking the Evil God by calling them the Dens of Evil.”
“It seems there was a labyrinth here until over a thousand years ago. The Dens of Evil are what remain of that labyrinth after it fell.”
I remembered the sight of the Kuvork Kingdom labyrinth collapsing after the labyrinth core was destroyed.
If something similar happened over a thousand years ago, it made sense that this would be the result.
There were entrances to these Dens of Evil all over the kingdom, many of which were connected to each other. Overall, this made for a structure with well over a thousand different areas.
They came in all shapes and sizes, and the party had encountered the demon lord and his imposters in five of the largest ones.
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