“Breathe in. Breathe out.”
With no one else to lean on, Casioth obediently followed the man’s words. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
Repeating it over and over, his breathing naturally came back to him. He was still panting a little, but once his condition improved considerably, Casioth asked the question that had been on his mind.
“Who are you?”
“Me? Just someone who happened to pick up a poor unfortunate soul who was half-dead.”
The man said that as he poured water into a cup himself and held it out to Casioth. His tone was difficult to read — somewhere between kind and unkind.
Casioth took the cup the man offered and downed the water, only then belatedly realizing just how thirsty he’d been.
Now that he noticed, he was hungry too. But given the circumstances — this person had apparently saved his life and even treated his wounds — he couldn’t very well ask for food on top of that.
“Thank you.”
Casioth said it composedly, making an effort to gather himself.
At those words, the man’s expression shifted into something indescribable for just a moment, but the look vanished as quickly as it had come.
Grumble.
Because from Casioth’s stomach came a loud rumble that was impossible to ignore.
“……”
“……”
Casioth’s youthful face flushed red in an instant. Every trace of composure he’d had disappeared without a trace.
Come to think of it, by the time they’d reached the fourth day of their assault on the Demon King’s Castle, food had already been running low.
From that point on, he’d continued climbing higher through the Demon King’s Castle on a half-empty stomach, and by the time he reached the 99th floor, he’d already been on the verge of collapsing from hunger.
It was because he hadn’t set out with the intention of going straight to the top from the beginning, which meant his preparations had been lacking.
And so, Casioth had no idea how many days he’d gone without eating. At an age when he should have been eating well, no less.
There was no way he could lay out all those circumstances in detail, so Casioth was hanging his head in embarrassment when the man, who had been silently watching him, made a breezy suggestion.
“Let’s eat first.”
“Why did you do it?”
It had been days since he’d last eaten, but the table was piled not with porridge or soup for easy digestion, but with meat dishes.
It was a thoughtless combination if there ever was one, but it wasn’t as if he were in any position to complain — and Casioth was hungry enough to die — so he shoveled food into his mouth indiscriminately.
That was when the question came. Why did you do it.
There was no direct object — no “what” — but Casioth understood without difficulty.
The man who had introduced himself as Ranok said he’d found Casioth near the Demon King’s Castle.
What other reason would a human have for collapsing with serious injuries near the Demon King’s Castle, aside from challenging the Demon King? It must mean: why did you do something so reckless?
“……”
Casioth, who had been shoveling food into his mouth, swallowed the mouthful he’d been chewing and replied.
“I needed money and honor.”
Saying it out loud, he sounded like someone who’d risked his life on a foolish choice. But it wasn’t entirely wrong, either.
“My mother is very ill, and that piece of shit I can’t even bring myself to call my father…… ah, I’m sorry.”
Casioth caught himself, flustered — he’d let slip the very word he usually used to refer to his father.
Having been ground down in the dirt over and over since childhood because of his father, Casioth’s personality and manner of speaking were, to put it charitably, not exactly refined — but even so, he’d wanted to watch his words as much as possible in front of the person who had saved his life. And here he’d already failed at the very start.
But Ranok laughed without any sign of minding.
“And what did that piece of shit do?”
“……That piece of shit gambled all over town, left behind nothing but debt, and went missing. I’m young and uneducated, and the only thing I know how to do is use my body. I was at least decent at that, and I thought if I defeated the Demon King, I’d earn a lot of money and honor, so——”
To be accurate, Casioth’s skill level was far beyond “at least decent.” A genius among geniuses, one the Sword Saint of the Empire had marveled at, calling him a swordsmanship prodigy who would surpass even himself.
If things had gone a little differently, Casioth would have become the Sword Saint’s disciple and had a bright future secured for him.
But Casioth didn’t have time. And in the midst of that, a kidnapping incident happened, and people said it was the Demon Clan’s doing.
An Imperial edict came down, and skilled individuals from across the land flocked in.
Casioth didn’t hesitate to throw himself into it.
Ranok tilted his head.
“If you die, money and everything else are meaningless, aren’t they?”
“There was no other way to earn money and honor both at once. Healing my mother requires the power of the temple, but the temple absolutely refuses to treat commoners.”
To receive healing from the temple, one had to either donate a large sum of money or be a noble. That wasn’t a path available to Casioth, a poor commoner.
Medicine had been branded as something ominous by the temple. If you weren’t a noble, commoners who fell gravely ill simply had to die.
Naturally, the choices available to young Casioth were few. The subjugation of Demon King Gerard was the only lifeline that had come down to a Casioth like that.
If he defeated the Demon King — then money and honor would follow. He could bring his mother to the temple. With luck, he might even cross paths with mages who had learned healing magic.
Right up until he’d challenged the Demon King’s Castle, Casioth had been certain of success. The Sword Saint calling him a genius who would surpass himself was no empty flattery. He was a genuine prodigy, he had faith in his own abilities, and he’d been firmly convinced that he would succeed and save his mother without fail.
But in the end, he had failed.
Throughout the whole story, Ranok barely touched his food and listened to Casioth in silence.
It seemed less that he was being kind, and more that he simply couldn’t be bothered to stop him.
Having grown up reading the room from a young age, Casioth noticed this too — but he quickly looked away from that truth. The man in front of him was a good person, a lifesaver who had saved a dying stranger for no reason at all.
Casioth wasn’t so lacking in decency as to point out someone’s attitude to the person who had saved his life.
“When do you plan to go report about the Demon King’s Castle?”
So when the man, who had been listening to his story, skipped over everything else and asked that, Casioth could only blink.
“Report…… you mean?”
“Yes. You went through something terrible in such a fearsome place as the Demon King’s Castle, so shouldn’t you let people know? That no one should go to the Demon King’s Castle.”
Was it his imagination, or did the words no one carry a particular emphasis?
But it was a fair point. The image of the terrifying Demon King Gerard surfaced in Casioth’s mind.
That immense strength, that magical power…… an overwhelming might that felt as if he could never so much as graze it with his fingertips.
Just recalling that tremendous power, he felt goosebumps rise all over his body. Casioth had been absently rubbing his own forearms when he suddenly noticed something strange.
He couldn’t remember. That man’s face.
Even though he had seen it not long ago. Even though he clearly remembered marveling at the man’s appearance, thinking, So it’s true what they say — the Demon Clan only has beauties, men and women alike, to bewitch humans with.
And yet, for the life of him, he couldn’t recall that face.
Casioth struggled for a moment trying to bring it to mind, then gave up.
There was nothing to be gained from trying to remember what that demon looked like — it only brought back unpleasant memories.
“You’re right, but I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do next.”
“You don’t know?”
“My older brothers and sisters handled all the smaller things. Since I was the youngest, all I ever did was the physical work, so……”
“……”
Ranok clicked his tongue. Watching that, Casioth couldn’t suppress his embarrassment and his cheeks reddened.
They’d told him to work hard and build his strength, so he’d really done nothing but swing his sword — and now that the adults who had sheltered him were gone, all that was left was a clueless kid.
Ranok looked like he was mulling something over for a moment. While Casioth was inwardly marveling that even a furrowed brow looked handsome on him, the man came to a conclusion quickly.
“I’ll help you.”
Casioth blinked at those unexpected words.
“Really?”
“Yes. The sooner the report is made, the better, isn’t it? The capital is quite far from here, so we should set out early.”
It was a one-sided act of goodwill. The corner of Casioth’s mouth crumbled — he hadn’t received kindness like this in a long time.
Having his life saved alone was already more than he deserved, and yet here this person was, saying he would help him all the way to the end. Just where had this angel come from?
Unable to contain his emotions, he gripped his spoon so hard it seemed it might break — and then something suddenly occurred to him and he snapped back to his senses.
“W-wait, before that!”
Casioth hurriedly stopped the man, who had already started calculating the route from here to the capital.
“There’s somewhere I absolutely must stop by first.”
“……Isn’t this a situation where every moment counts?”
“That’s true, but——”
The cold black eyes looking straight at him made him feel as though he was making an unreasonable demand, and he shrank back — but this was the one thing he couldn’t back down from, so Casioth forced himself to speak.
“I need to go see my mother.”
Invoking the unassailable reason — that he needed to visit his ill mother.
A few days later, Ranok found himself in a slash-and-burn farming village that he would never, under any ordinary circumstances, have any reason to visit.
He’d been told it was the village where the family had ended up settling, after Casioth’s piece-of-shit father — that scammer and criminal who had run cons and committed crimes all over the place — had turned the whole family into fugitives overnight.
As is often the case with havens for those on the run, the village of people who had chosen a life of burning everything and moving on was lacking in just about everything.
