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A little while after the battle noise died down and silence returned to the ruins which used to be a fortress, Albert and the others came back to the site of the battle between Renya and Kazuya, albeit being rather hesitant about it. What entered their view over there was a mountain of stones as high as an adult, which made them think that it had likely been built by stacking up the rubble of the destroyed fortress, Renya who kept throwing burnable material into the one remaining opening in the mountain that was blazing with flames, and Shion who was tumbling down the mountain while screaming after being struck by a tongue of flames after she had attempted to remove some of the stones in order to create an escape route for the air or smoke atop the mountain.
Until a few minutes ago, a fierce battle had probable raged in this area, and thus no one in the group around Albert could comprehend the spectacle of a mountain suddenly having appeared, Renya apparently acting as fire watchman, and Shion silently enduring the pain while on all fours, apparently having received quite the impact against her butt or waist when she fell down.
Eventually, Albert timidly called out to Renya, who had started to gently pat Shion’s waist, seemingly worried about her well-being despite his eyes looking at her as if facing a lost case.
“Umm, Renya-dono?”
“We’re in the middle of something, so leave it for later.”
The one answering Albert was Shion. She looked somewhat entranced as Renya’s hand stroked her waist right until the moment Albert was about to speak up, but as soon as he did, she interrupted him with a freezingly cold voice while maintaining her enraptured expression.
Apparently satisfied with Albert reflexively drawing back, Shion attempted to request a massage from Renya next, but capitalizing on the full power of snapping his wrist, Renya’s hand slapped her butt with a hearty sound, causing her to jump up while screaming.
“Don’t be so intimidating.”
After flatly scolding Shion who protested with teary eyes while stroking the part he hit, Renya faced Albert.
“Renya-dono, what about the boy who seemed to be a leader of the demon king’s army?”
It’d be weird for him to not have left behind a corpse if he’d been cut down. And the surroundings hadn’t been destroyed to such an extent that you’d expect him to be pulverized by something strong enough to not leave a corpse behind.
Because of that, Albert questioned Renya while deliberately forcing himself to ignore the burning stone furnace, but Renya silently pointed at that very furnace which Albert had tried to not look at.
“Err…”
“He’s burning inside, I guess.”
The two conflicting feelings of sheer disbelief and his comprehension that it had been just as he’d expected transformed Albert’s expression into something rather questionable. But, without showing any consideration towards Albert’s feelings on this, Renya continued, “You do realize that it’s not like I came here to rescue you or anything like that, right?”
From the very start, Renya’s only concern had been to avoid the hero Albert falling into the hands of the demon king. Him getting involved in this battle was no more than Renya stopping the soldiers of the demon king’s army to kill the ordinary dragonoids aka civilians.
“I am well aware of this. Yet, you still have my thanks, Earl Renya.”
Even if Renya said that he didn’t come here to save Albert, he still saved dragonoid citizens and prevented his soldiers from becoming lifeless corpses. For this reason, Albert expressed his thanks and the other soldiers followed suit.
Seeing even a woman, who Renya guessed to be a dragonoid priestess, bow her head in gratitude, Renya cleared his throat while looking somewhat awkward, “It’s not that I’m asking you for gratitude either.”
“We know that as well.”
“Also, if you say you feel indebted to me in some way, I do have a request.”
Upon Renya’s remark, Albert spontaneously turned around, meeting eyes with Charlotte, the shrine princess. In response, Charlotte nodded her head once without any hesitation whatsoever. After confirming as much, Albert nodded at Renya and answered, “Let us hear it.”
“It’s a request towards Hero Albert. Based on this time’s debt, I’d like you to disregard my past transgressions and join up with the other heroes once more.”
The dragonoid soldiers and even Albert himself, who had held their breaths in anticipation of what outrageous demand this human earl would make, looked flabbergasted when they heard Renya’s request. Albert himself had once turned his back on Renya and fled from the group of heroes. But, without mentioning that fact with a single word, Renya merely requested that Albert let bygones be bygones and come back.
It was impossible for the dragonoids, let alone Albert, to not be surprised about this.
“I don’t have any intention at all to change my ways or thinking, but just because of that, it’s not like I can’t understand your line of thinking.”
As the reaction of the dragonoids was apparently within the scope of Renya’s expectations, he quickly provided an explanation.
“The demon we saved was actually a hero, but let’s leave that aside for now.”
“What did you say just now, Renya-dono?”
“I’ll explain later. Since I’m going to introduce you with her soon anyway, I’ll have her explain the details to you then and there.”
“H-Haaah…”
“Apart from that, the combat prowess of heroes is too valuable, and I’d like to avoid you being used by the demon king through some kind of means.”
Renya’s words caused Albert to recall the soldiers of the demon king’s army that had attacked this fortress, resulting in him shuddering. As most of those soldiers moved and looked like corpses, Albert apparently imagined what would have happened to him if he had been added to their ranks.
In reality, Renya had killed two Losts with Sazane and Kazuya at this point, so Renya suspected that they wouldn’t run into any ability users, who could manipulate the dead, anymore. If just speaking of Losts, only one, the troublesome guy called Karen, was left, but Renya somehow felt that he didn’t want that Lost to use an ability like this against himself. Then again, since he could only say that it somehow seemed like that wouldn’t come to pass, he thought that it was better to be safe than sorry.
And while at it, Renya didn’t have any plans to expressly explain all the circumstances surrounding ability transfers and so on to Albert.
“I can understand the wish of not wanting to abandon one’s homeland, but at this rate it’s quite likely that the dragonoids as a race will perish. That’s nothing you people desire either, right?”
If they excluded all emotional issues and only considered the citizens, the dragonoids had almost no path allowing them to survive other than taking refuge at Renya’s place. Because of the continuous battles against the demon king’s army, the people were exhausted, the goods were running low, and they had no prospects of getting replenishments for either.
“Rather, I slightly admire your gall for considering to separate from us despite having been dependent on our relief aid after the previous battle over your capital city,” Shion touched upon a topic, which Renya had steered clear of, with a serious expression.
————– End of Part 1 ————–
While the dragonoids ended up lowering their faces, Renya signaled Shion to say no further by raising an index finger in front of his lips.
“In various ways, it’s better to pretend that we didn’t hear this.”
“Renya-dono, sorry for causing so much trouble…”
“That’s why I’ve told you to pretend that you didn’t hear it, right?”
After silencing Albert with a slightly angry glare, Renya sighed once, “Anyway, I’d like you to evacuate to the human continent together with your people for the time being. Of course, if you insist on not fighting as a hero, I won’t mind you joining the evacuation as a normal refugee, Albert.”
Even if Albert didn’t participate in the battle against the demon king, they already had four heroes. Therefore Renya saw no reason to force Albert into participation. Of course, it was a plain fact that five people would be better than four when it came to a battle, but Renya was also worried that forcing the demon-hater Albert to cooperate with Emil might actually lead to a lowering of the hero group’s overall combat force instead.
“If you choose to fight as a hero, there will be times when you’ll need to fight together with people you don’t like. So I won’t ask anything unreasonable of you.”
“I would never be able to forgive myself for just benefiting from your protection without doing anything myself, despite being able to do so,” Albert knelt down on the spot.
At the same time, he removed the scabbards with his katanas from his waist and placed them on the ground next to him. Joining his hands in front of his chest, he bowed his head while lowering his eyes.
“Earl-dono, I pledge you my alleg…”
“No need,” Renya interrupted Albert with a truly dismissive look on his face. “I don’t need a hero’s loyalty. And even if I were to receive it, I wouldn’t have any use for it.”
Because the heroes had gathered around Renya, people tended to forget, but the heroes originally were the decisive and strongest combat forces of each race. One had to pay careful attention on how to apply such combat assets.
So, even if he were to be told to grab the reins of such big guns, it’d be nothing but a nuisance that would lack any benefit in Renya’s eyes. As such, it wasn’t anything he’d accept out of a free choice. Then again, this story only applied because Renya didn’t take his own combat prowess into consideration.
“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care whatever you do as long as you stay where I can see you so that the demon king’s side won’t be able to use your hero power. So feel free to do what you like.”
“…Got it.”
Albert agreed while not being all that happy about it, but from Renya’s point of view, he had achieved his goal in coming here at the point when he got Albert to consent. Renya himself didn’t give so much as a damn, even thinking that the future would take care of itself, but reality wasn’t so kind.
“The problem is how we’re going to transport the dragonoids all the way to the human continent, right?”
Even if you could say that their numbers had dropped sharply, the dragonoids present in this place, combining soldiers and civilians, easily reached a number in the three digits. Of course, this fort had no transfer gate, and as the transfer gates of other cities should have been destroyed, it was hard to believe that they’d find a working gate at this point in time.
Having said that, Renya knew that it’d be equal to suicide if they were to lead the survivors through the Miasma Forest on foot, and thus he didn’t regard this as an option worthy of consideration.
Renya tried to ponder about the possibility of having Rubydra go back home and stir the other dragons into cooperating with the transport, but even if he had the dragons carry the dragonoids in cages, similar to what he had done in the past with Keith’s men, he wouldn’t know how many dragons would follow the call to arms without any incentive whatsoever, and moreover, it’d be necessary to transport the dragonoids over a distance that couldn’t be possibly compared to the previous, relatively short trip.
“The transfer gate at the northern shrine, which we used earlier, has stopped working as well, right?”
“All the gates on the dragonoid continent lost most of their functions. Their facilities might still remain, but it’d require time and resources to get them working again.”
Renya grimaced at Albert’s apologetic explanation. The idea of having a group of exhausted soldiers and likewise exhausted civilians travel over a long distance wasn’t realistic and would need a lot of time. Furthermore, if the restoration of the transfer gate would need time and resources on top of that, Renya couldn’t even begin how much time it’d take for them to get back to human territory.
“Which reminds me, where did Giliel go?”
“I’ll be right at your service as long as you call for me. Do you have any business with me?”
Probably because the battle had ended, Giliel had switched from her angelic version to her previous Peddler Kilie version. After seeing her jog over, Renya asked since he hadn’t anything to lose anyway, “Can’t you transport us to the human territory with some sort of divine power or something like that?”
“Don’t be so unreasonable. Well, I won’t claim that it’s absolutely impossible, though,” answered Kilie while folding her arms in front of her chest and brooding, “So far as it goes, I possess the most power among the supervisors in this world, despite my current appearance. If I forced it, it’d be possible to transfer everyone to the human continent, but it comes with a problem.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’d lead to the power available to me decreasing. If I were to transfer such a big number of people across the Miasma Forest and demon continent in one go, it’d consume a huge amount of power. That’d likely result in me becoming weakened. And the demon supervisor, who was one of the strongest among the supervisors managing this world, is in the midst of pulling off some secret moves.”
“In short, you want to have some power left to oppose him, right?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. I think I’d still be superior when it comes to raw power, but it’s also a fact that the demon supervisor is more knowledgeable about this world than I am since he’s been staying here for a long time. I’d like to retain enough power to break through any potential move he might do with sheer force, so to be honest, I’m not really keen to help with the transport of anyone other than you, Renya-san, Shion-san, and Albert-san.”
Kilie had said all that with a stiff expression, but suddenly her lips curved into a grin as she stared straight into Renya’s eyes.
“But, that’s not the answer you wanted to hear, is it Renya-san?”
“Well yeah. Though I can understand where you’re coming from,” Renya frankly confirmed Kilie’s question.
Kilie responded to his reply with a broad smile, “In that case, let me assist you as Kilie and not Giliel. Taking an optimistic view on things that they’ll work out one way or the other, I’ll proceed with somehow going along with your idea, Renya-san.”
“Is that fine with you?”
“After all, I’m well aware that I’m asking quite a lot of you, Renya-san. Though that’s actually not me, but my mistress,” said Kilie with a wry smile while spreading both arms.
Just that action alone caused some kind of power to spread through the ground, resulting in a faint, golden light to start shining from the ground.
“As long as we manage to take a route to the human continent while bypassing the demon’s territory, it should work out somehow, I think.”
While the dragonoids timidly looked around due to the golden light breaking out from the ground beneath their feet, the archangel, who could only be described as a goddess in the eyes of the people inhabiting this world, revealed a mischievous grin.
“Oh right, please be so kind as to obscure our exchange just now with some explanation like it being an act of compassion by god or some such when recording this in a myth or something similar, okay?”
After adding such a disclaimer, Kilie quickly whirled around on the spot. This rotation triggered the light to gain in intensity, filling the visual field of everyone present inside the fortress.
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