The Night Before the Competition - 4

A garden spread out between the buildings, with a well-managed row of roadside trees. A large metropolis not far from Aureatia, Gimeena City.

In the middle of the roadside trees, there was a huge cargo being transported by a gigant-pulled heavy-freight carriage.

"Hey, be careful carrying that, now!"

The screaming voice belonged to a remarkedly large-built gigant, even among the other gigants. Even on their enormous scale, he appeared like an adult surrounded by children.

"This is real important stuff, okay?! Maye sure you don't get caught on the buildings when you turn, you hear?!"

There had to be some among the city's residents who realized it.

This man, taller than a city tower, was the invincible hero of the Sine Riverstead—Mele the Horizon's Roar.

"Whoaaaa, amazing…"

With Mele's imposing figure, drawing people's eyes just as he walked, right in front of her, the young girl couldn't suppress her amazement.

She was a survivor of the ruins of Nagan Labyrinth City—Yuno the Distant Talon.

…Mele the Horizon's Roar. The Mele, really planning on appearing in the imperial competition…

On the road back from the mission from Aureatia, she was staying a night in the city to get some rest.

She and her traveling companion, Soujirou the Willow-Sword, had separate lodgings, but she was thinking of delivering some hawthorns to the layabout as a snack.

However, when she gazed up at the terrifying champion right in front of her, it awakened her to her own heart, whether she wanted it to or not.

I… I'm trying to kill Soujirou.

Would the Soujirou who cleaved the Dungeon Golem in two, on the day her homeland was destroyed, be able to kill the gigant champion before her eyes?

Yuno's reason for sending Soujirou to participate in the imperial competition was to lure him into the jaws of death and get her revenge for these feelings of hers that she still wasn't fully convinced of herself.

Mele isn't the only one. The Second General Rosclay. Alus the Star Runner. Or maybe even…some far more terrifying monster that was totally inscrutable to someone like me…

It was impossible for Yuno to step into that sort of vortex of shura.

She thought there were certain to be games that required true courage to battle.

"…Ah."

Just how long had she been standing there? Yuno suddenly realized the

situation before her eyes.

A thick roadside tree, caught by the heavy freight carriage's cargo, had snapped at the base and was falling toward Yuno.

"Uh-oh."

The dim-witted words slipped out of her mouth.

She was going to die. Here in a place like this. The realization came too late. "Hey, you all right?!"

Yet things didn't end up that way. A colossal hand grabbed the tree.

Mele the Horizon's Roar, keeping an eye on how the transport was going, handled the unexpected accident with agility wholly disproportional to his massive frame.

He casually placed the broken tree back in place on the opposite side of the road.

"Don't go spacing out like that! You minia are a buncha weaklings, ya know that?! Doesn't take much for you to end up dead, gwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Th-thank... Thank you..."

Still blinking in surprise, Yuno managed to express her gratitude, but it appeared the legendary gigant had already stopped listening.

Even the scolding he gave to the gigant in the transport unit that exposed civilians to danger was mixed in with laughter. Looking at his demeanor, it seemed that even the grave danger she faced had been utterly inconsequential.

"…What was that?"

Yuno had stopped moving while she stared dumbfounded at the transport team's departure, when suddenly, she heard a young girl's voice call to her.

"Miss, your hawthorns." "Huh?"

"They fell out of the bag. Are you all right?" It was an elf child wrapped up in a green robe.

Her pretty turquoise eyes, so clear they were almost transparent, looked up at Yuno.

"See, look, they got some dirt on them. Wash it off and you can still eat it, but minia get queasy about that stuff, don't they?"

"…Sorry. A lot happened at once, and I didn't notice. Thank you."

The three hawthorns she thought were in her bag had fallen out and were soaked in the mud from yesterday's rain.

"Well, looks like I'm going to have to buy some more. I'd be fine eating these, but I was planning on giving them to someone…"

"Hmmm…"

The young girl didn't look particularly interested as she gazed at Yuno.

Then she took out three hawthorns from her own bag and showed them to Yuno.

"Here, have them."

"Huh?! B-but I can't just take the food of a girl passing by on the street like that!"

"But making the trip back to the market from here would be a lotta trouble, right? That tree wasn't even your fault anyway. Ugh, those gigants are so careless and annoying, aren't they?! Seriously, I hate gigants!"

"But…you're the one who paid for these hawthorns, right?" "…Does it seem that way to you?"

Yuno wasn't sure why, but the young girl flashed her an impish smile.

"This isn't anything to worry about, seriously. Since I can do anything, after all.

In the mountains far away from Aureatia stood the Free City of Okafu. Although there were a great many mercenaries living in the city, very few of them met Morio the Sentinel in the central citadel face-to-face.

However, that day, a skeleton mercenary had made a visit to his room. "Shalk the Sound Slicer, then? I've heard the general story. Well, relax for

now."

"No need to worry about that; I'm plenty relaxed as it is. I'm here about the imperial competition, Morio the Sentinel."

Shalk didn't go sit in the chair he was offered. He remained standing up against the doorway as he spoke.

"I had figured there wouldn't be anyone who'd back a construct like me, but apparently there is. I've been given the empty spot that the Black Tone left behind. Sorry to do this mid-contract, but I'll be leaving Okafu."

"…Right. Soldiers are free to find their own battlefield. If you attempted to deliver me to them right now, that'd be a great achievement to present them with, too."

"Save the jokes. I don't intend on allying with Aureatia or allying with you lot, either. Been so from the very start. I just want information on the Hero…the identity of who slayed the True Demon King."

"You think it might've been you, is that it?"

"The way I see it, the Hero who defeated the True Demon King must not

know who exactly they are, either. That's why they haven't come forward. Makes sense, right?"

"Though I doubt it's really that simple."

Morio lit his cigar. From the death of the True Demon King up to the present, no one had the slightest idea as to their true identity, even himself, one of the parties actively covering up the truth regarding the True Demon King.

If there was evidence left behind regarding the True Demon King, that meant that somewhere out there in the world was evidence of the True Hero as well. Whether they were still alive—or dead.

That one fact alone was something any living creature in the land wished for, yet no one was able to uncover.

"Shalk the Sound Slicer. Why did you come all the way to Okafu?" "I told you, didn't I? To get information on the Hero."

"You must've wandered among the other powers that undertook investigations into The Land of The End…save the minian nation of Aureatia. There must've been a reason you didn't first pick the mercenary city that readily accepts constructs into their ranks."

"…You're going to make me say it?" Morio smiled dryly.

"What? I just figured that sort of future'd be pretty interesting, too."

Shalk might have known from the beginning that Okafu wouldn't actually hand over any information on The Land of The End as laid out in their contract. Perhaps instead, there was a chance he would end up in a fight with Okafu like Kazuki.

"Enough. It's a boring story to tell."

"Let me also ask while I'm at it… Why didn't you go to The Land of The End yourself?"

"..."

"With enough skill to kill Kazuki, you should've been able to step into that hellscape and survive. Even if there was a group scheming to keep you quiet, I doubt they'd be able to keep up with your spear."

Morio the Sentinel was an aberrant visitor and a self-proclaimed demon king who had established an entire nation. He had a more thorough knowledge of the psychology of a warrior than even the warrior himself.

"…Scared, were you?" "You…may be right."

Shalk didn't reply with a joke.

"I might be scared."

It was terrifying. That's why he needed to know. The truth about the True Demon King and the Hero.

In the town below the citadel in the same Free City of Okafu, a man was visiting a building resembling a small commercial office.

"Phew, I nearly got myself killed quite a number of times on this investigation, I'll tell ya."

A man with a short and round stature, carrying a wooden box on his back. He appeared to be a garrulous man, beginning to speak as soon as he slipped through the door.

"This time really was the scariest of all. Scarier than any battlefield, that's for sure. I've got a true sense of it now, but to think that something like that was alive just a few years ago. It's got to be my only regret about coming to this world, honestly."

"…Thank you for your work, Mr. Yukiharu Shijima."

The young boy sitting on the wooden rotating chair gave a small, seated bow.

He looked no older than a thirteen-year-old boy, but such standards couldn't be applied to visitors. Particularly to the one known as the Gray-Haired Child— Hiroto the Paradox.

The investigation into the True Demon King that Zigita Zogi requested Yukiharu the Twilight Diver was a commission to obtain materials to aid Hiroto the Paradox's negotiations with the Free City of Okafu.

"However, there isn't any need to do any further investigations regarding the True Demon King or the Hero... For now, I've achieved the goal of this first stage."

"Oh, you sure? If you'd like, Mr. Hiroto, I was thinking I'd use this momentum to start investigating the True Hero, too."

His claim seemed nothing more than big talk, to be so flippant about the mystery that no one across the land had come close to reaching, but it showed just how confident in his abilities he was. The journalist Yukiharu the Twilight Diver was also himself a deviant banished from his original world.

"There's not really any reason to go along with this whole imperial

competition hullabaloo, is there? If we reveal the True Hero to the world with proof to back it up, we'll be able to blow their whole scheme out of the water, imperial competition and all. Heck, you could just directly back them yourself, Hiroto. I think the faster, the better here, myself."

"That isn't a very beneficial approach for me."

Hiroto forced a smile. For many years, Yukiharu had been hurrying across the continent as Hiroto's eyes, but that didn't necessarily mean the man understood all the facets of Hiroto's plans.

"That would result in Aureatia being destroyed, wouldn't it? The mobilization of Okafu and making use of the imperial competition…is a much gentler, and more peaceful, infiltration than that."

"Oh, come now. Mr. Politician, that's simply another way to say invasion, isn't it?"

"Yukiharu. An invasion is a loss. It only decreases the number of potential supporters. My goal is ultimately—"

…Here in this world, there was even someone trying to turn it into a reality— An ideal that seemed perfectly impossible.

"—a happy ending. I need to settle things in a way that benefits everyone."

The world's enemy, the True Demon King, who had plunged the whole land into terror, had been brought down by someone.

That individual's name, and whether they truly existed or not, was still a mystery.

Now, with the end of the age of fear, it had become necessary to determine who this Hero was.

Now there were sixteen shura.

Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

Alus the Star Runner.

Kia the World Word.

Nastique the Quiet Singer.

Mele the Horizon's Roar.

Linaris the Obsidian.

Toroa the Awful.

Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.

Kuuro the Cautious.

Rosclay the Absolute.

Lucnoca the Winter.

Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

Uhak the Silent.

Shalk the Sound Slicer.

Tu the Magic.

Hiroto the Paradox.