17 8

“Now then...” Kimura’s glasses flashed. “They say the third time’s the charm. How about we get down to business?” Shinohara nodded and drew his sword.
The blade was short and broad. Its tip wasn’t pointed, but instead slanted, as if it had been cut off. It looked like a long, sturdy dagger, or perhaps a short, thick longsword. Maybe it was a relic?
“We tried a variety of methods, but magic was almost completely ineffective. To be exact, we found that it’s possible to destroy the stone guards by alternating between Arve fire magic and Kanon ice magic. However, this technique can’t be used in the middle of a chaotic battle, and it’s hard to call it efficient. Considering what we’ll still need to do after this, I’m asking everyone to conserve your magic.”
“So all we’ve got to do is smash them up, huh?” Tokimune winked. “Simple is best. Anna-san, we’re counting on you!”
“Of course! I cheer you extremely hard, yeah!”
“Yay! With Anna-san cheering for me, I’ve got the strength of eight men!”
“What, only eight?” Ranta said.
“Huh? Uh, well, how many do you have, Ranta? Can you beat that?!”
“I’ve got the strength of a hundred men, obviously!”
“I’ve got the strength of a thousand.” Tada jumped in.
“Oh! That’s some big talk, Tada! Then I’m gonna aim for eight thousand!” Tokimune wagered.
“Tokimune, you ass... I’ve got the strength of sixteen thousand, then.”
“You so small, yeah! Assholes! Your loincloths squeezing your family jewels too tight?! Aim for a million!”
“Wow! A million?! Why not beat that and go for, like, a billion?!”
“I’ve got the strength...of eight trillion!”
“There he goes! Tadacchi! Tada-san! We’ve got a trillionaire! Yahoo...!” Kikkawa cheered.
“Yahoo.” Mimorin followed him.
What was that? The tag team of Kikkawa’s exuberant “yahoo” with Mimorin’s far more subdued one made Haruhiro’s head hurt.
“Buh-vwohah...!” Kimura laughed. His laughter sounded downright eccentric, and Haruhiro really wished he’d cut it out. “Here they come! Here they come! Here! They! Come! The stone guards have arriiiived...”
Shinohara banged on his shield twice with his sword, and a number of the members of Orion began throwing pole-shaped tools toward the central room one after another. Those tools would emit a relatively powerful light until they burned out. They started shining just past the entrance into the central room from the antechamber.
Haruhiro exhaled, then looked at each of his comrades.
“’Kay!” Kuzaku raised up his shoulders, then let the tension out of them.
“Meow!” Yume spun her right arm in a circle. That was the arm carrying her warhammer, but she seemed not to feel the weight of it in the slightest. Her wrists and her shoulders were both incredibly flexible.
“Heh...” The masked dread knight slowly twisted his neck, acting like this was no big deal to him.
Merry met Haruhiro’s gaze, nodding slightly.
Setora was looking toward the central room, not holding the warhammer in a fighting posture, but instead letting it dangle at her side.
Some things came out of the passages on either side of the middle room.
There was a heavy sound, and they came out, one after another, in columns.
The things. They were too stoney to call soldiers. Too stoney might seem like an odd turn of phrase, but they looked like rocks. They seemed to have two legs. Or maybe it would be better to say they had the bare minimum required to move around. Their bodies were like thick shields. In fact, it might have been more accurate to describe them as excessively thick stone slates. They didn’t have arm-like appendages or anything that resembled a head. The shields, or slates, had four or sometimes five spines sticking out of them.
“Stone guards?” Tada lifted up his warhammer and lowered his hips. “You guys have no naming sense. Those things are just spiny walking statues. I’d call ’em spinies instead.”
“Ohh,” Tokimune said, flashing his pearly whites. “Spinies, huh? I like it.”
“Yes! Spinies! I dig it!” Kikkawa swung his warhammer around excitedly. “Spinies sounds wayyyy cuter than stone guards! Don’t you think so, Anna-san?!”
“They spinies now, yeah!”
“Yay! Spinies! Yahoo!”
“Yahoo.”
Seriously, what was with that “yahoo”? Mimorin’s yahoos are way too unenthusiastic. And they’re just renaming things on a whim. Spinies? Seriously? Is that name okay?
Well, it was already stuck in Haruhiro’s head. He wasn’t going to be driving it out any time soon.
“Then let’s slay some spinies.” Shinohara accepted it without fuss.
Looks like spinies it is.
“This is going to be a long fight. If you run out of breath or get injured, please don’t push yourselves. Fall back and rest. —Now, let’s get started.”



10. Falsehood and Truth
It wasn’t that he’d been underestimating how difficult this would be. Orion had been forced to retreat here twice. It wasn’t going to be simple. He’d been prepared for that.
When the spinies kept rushing into the antechamber, the members of the detached force had managed to handle it calmly, without panicking, at first. Renji, Tada, and Matsuyagi, the giant warrior from Orion, had all been incredible. With those three at the center, the detached force had pushed almost into the middle room. When the three of them started to look tired from smashing spinies, Shinohara, Tokimune, Ron, and Kuzaku, who had been acting in more of a support role up until then, stepped up to the front. These two groups took turns manning the front line, and the others, including Ranta, Yume, Haruhiro, Setora, Kikkawa, Mimorin, and the rest of Orion, filled any gaps that emerged. Merry, Kimura, and Chibi-chan were the healers. Anna-san was a priest too, but she was in charge of cheering for the group and providing encouragement.
Things went really well at first. It was going to be a slog, but there was no helping that. It was to be expected, somewhat. Haruhiro had braced himself for it, but by the time he had smashed three spinies with his warhammer, his arms were already numb. After he crushed his sixth, the strength started to leave his limbs. Haruhiro noticed he was sweating profusely. He retreated to where Merry and the others were. Ranta was there too, his back rising and falling with labored breaths.
Merry told him, “If it hurts anywhere, tell me. Like your shoulder or your elbow. I can fix that.” So he had her cast Cure on him. It wouldn’t do anything about the sweat, but the slight pain in his joints vanished.
“Time to get back into it, Ranta.”
“Oh, shut up, you trash.”
“Lose your spirit?”
“As if, you piece of shit. You turd. You steaming pile of feces.”
Ranta headed back to the front line spewing complaints about how this sort of manual labor was beneath him, it was a waste of his talent, and more. Haruhiro, on the other hand, probably didn’t mind simple, repetitive tasks. Even when he was standing next to Ranta, smashing up spinies, it wasn’t that bad, but his arms tired in no time. The sweat was unbearable. He was always worried about Kuzaku and Setora, and kept vaguely aware of how they were doing. It was tough to manage more than that, though. When he swapped into the front line, he couldn’t spare anyone else much more attention than thinking, Oh, they backed away. I guess they traded places with someone.
When he pulled back for the third time, he thought, I don’t want to go back again, and he meant it from the bottom of his heart.
“Haru? If it’s just for a little while, I could—” Merry started to say.
Haruhiro was able to charge off with a, “No, no, no! It’s fine, it’s fine!” so he wasn’t at his limit just yet. But it was hard to see when this might end. The spinies seemed limitless in number, coming out of the side-tunnels of the central room and the passages in the rear of the back room. If Renji and the others got serious, they could likely push into the next chamber. But they didn’t. It wasn’t that they couldn’t. It seemed more likely that they had decided it wouldn’t help. Advancing wouldn’t change the situation. There was nothing to do but smash spinies.
How long were they going to need to keep doing this?
Shinohara figured the Lich King was using some sort of power—from a relic, no doubt—to produce the enemies in the Graveyard. If that theory was correct, wouldn’t that include the spinies? The Lich King was using rocks or whatever to produce more and more, then sending them in to halt the group’s invasion. The issue was, could this continue indefinitely?
It was possible that the march of the spinies might go on for all eternity.
But no, it shouldn’t. Everything had its limit. Nothing could be infinite. No way. It couldn’t be.
Is this ever going to end?
That was the thing no one dared say. The moment they did, they were finished. Everyone must have felt it. If their commitment wavered, there would be no recovering.
“Tada, get back! I’m stepping in! Kikkawa, you take Mimorin’s place too!” Tokimune’s voice was as bright and cheerful as ever. “Time for a refresh! Get some water! It’ll make you feel better! Anyone up for a word chain game?! No takers, huh? Ha ha ha!”
It was terrifying, really. How could he be so cheery? At times it could be maddening, but it was still an incredible help. Renji, who came back fully refreshed each time he pulled back, was a major contributor too. No matter how pessimistic Haruhiro was, he could
still think, It’ll be fine, Renji’s here. His morale fell and fell, but it never bottomed out. Haruhiro might be hopeless, but Renji was here, so in the end, it’d all work out somehow. Renji would do something.
Haruhiro was hopeless. He had been for a while. His legs wobbled so much he could barely stay on his feet. The warhammer was heavy in his arms. No, more like he couldn’t feel his arms. Wait, did he still have arms? He hadn’t lost them, had he? How was Haruhiro holding the warhammer? If anything, it felt like the warhammer was his arms. They vaguely hurt every time he forced himself to swing and hit a spiny. Was this pain? No, not quite. He felt a throbbing. But the rest of the time, his arms were numb. His lungs felt like they were going to burst. Maybe they already had, judging by his wheezing breaths. He was a wreck. An absolute wreck.
It amazed him, though. Whenever he went back to Merry, everyone there was crouching, sitting, or lying on the ground. And yet none of them stayed there forever. Not one. It might have taken some time, but they all got up, and headed back into the fray. Wow.
Since they hadn’t lost anyone yet, it felt like no one wanted to be the first to drop out. Haruhiro didn’t want to, at least. He’d feel pathetic. Being the first to drop out would be a disgrace. It was scary too, since it could spark a chain reaction.
If you can’t go on, you can’t go on. It is what it is. Doesn’t it take courage to drop out too? That thought was a constant temptation. Even if he collapsed, no one would blame him. No, someone would. Ranta absolutely would. He’d go on and on and on about it. Well, maybe he couldn’t afford to right now. But later? Oh, yeah. He’d tear into Haruhiro. If there was a later, that is.
Ranta was the one person he didn’t want complaining about him.
Not that much came out of Ranta’s mouth other than complaints. When Haruhiro could justify his position, it was easy to think, Oh, look. There he goes, spouting off again. But when Ranta was right, it wasn’t so easy. Nothing was worse than having Ranta laying into him and not having anything he could say in return. Ranta was probably thinking, Like hell I’m gonna go down before Haruhiro too. It was the one thing neither of them wanted. Seriously, though. What was with this relationship?
If Haruhiro didn’t use everything, absolutely everything, which included his relationship with Ranta, to fuel himself, then the bonfire in his heart might burn out, and only ashes would remain until they too vanished.
Renji, and Tokimune, and Tada, and Shinohara might be different, but Haruhiro was just a normal guy, or close enough to it. He was just delaying the moment of his collapse as it approached little by little, wasn’t he?
“Ngh...!” Renji threw his warhammers. Both of them. They struck a spiny that came trudging into the back room. It lurched, but didn’t collapse.
“Ron!”
“On it!” Ron shouted, his voice hoarse, and he dashed off. He swung his massive meat cleaver, or more accurately he bodily slammed into the spinies along with it. “Yeah!” The spiny, which Ron and his meat cleaver had crushed into the floor, didn’t even attempt to rise.
Renji was standing. Was that out of stubbornness? He puffed his chest out, gazing up at the ceiling as if he were too proud to look at the floor.
No spinies were coming out of the passages on the sides of the central room, or the ones in the rear of the back room.
Tokimune sat down. He was wheezing, out of breath.
Tada, meanwhile, was on all fours, vomiting.
Kikkawa had been sitting on his haunches for a while. Mimorin was also crouching. And behind them, Haruhiro, Kuzaku, Ranta, Yume, Setora, the warriors of Orion, including Matsuyagi, as well as their paladin, hunter, and thieves were all sitting or kneeling too.
With the exception of the priests and mages, the only ones still standing were Renji and Shinohara, who was helping Ron to his feet.
It had been a close, close, close shave.
They might have been able to handle another two, three, maybe even five spinies, but if there had been ten, who knows? It could have gone badly. Well, no, the priests, especially Kimura and Merry, could fight, and there were Adachi and the two mages from Orion as well. The detached force had managed to completely conserve their magic.
Did that mean that while it felt like a close shave to Haruhiro, it wasn’t really?
“Whew... Still, though...” Haruhiro only had his left knee on the ground. The right one was raised, and he was managing to stay in a crouch.
He glanced sideways at Ranta, sitting on the ground, looking like he was going to collapse if he stopped propping himself up with both arms.
Nice, I won, he thought to himself.
As he did, possibly by pure coincidence, Ranta looked toward Haruhiro. His mask had shifted aside. It must have been too hard for him to breathe with it on.
“Ngh...!” Ranta grunted as he tried to rise to his feet. That made Haruhiro want to stand too, but it’d be stupid to strain himself competing with Ranta.
“Grr...! Hahh...!” Ranta finally got to his feet, then stuck his tongue out with a vulgar laugh.
“I win! Geh heh heh!”
“Fine, whatever. It is what it is.”
“A win for me is a loss for you, Parupiro! Be a man and recognize it!”
“I told you I was fine with it...”
“Well, say it more clearly! I want to hear you say, ‘Ranta-sama beat me!’”
“Why should I?”
“Because you lost! You’ve got to declare it! Quit your moping! This is your responsibility as a man, man!”
“You’re the one guy I don’t want telling me how I ought to act, but...hold on, why’re you so full of energy?”
“Because I’m awesome!”
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I get it. I lose. I lost. Happy now?”
“Like hell I am. Act like more of a loser! Because you are one. You lost. Lick my feet like the pathetic loser you are! Ah! Yeah, no, forget that. If I let you lick my feet, they’ll get dirty. With your Parupiro germs!”
It looked like Ranta was regaining his vitality by running his mouth. Haruhiro, on the other hand, got more and more exhausted the longer he was forced to hear Ranta yammer on. Was Ranta sucking the life out of him? He had to assume so.
“Heh...” There was a familiar voice.
Looking over, a man with an eyepatch and ponytail was walking out of a passage in the rear of the back room.
“Huh?”
“Well fought, people...” Inui stopped in the middle of the central room, opening his right eye wide. “I, yes, I scouted out the burial chamber for you! While you were all stalling for time here, I did it!”
“That’s our Inui. Wouldn’t have expected anything less from you,” Tokimune said with a wink and a thumbs-up.
“Heh...” Inui turned to the side. Did he feel embarrassed by the compliment?
“When did he get there?” Shinohara blinked in surprise.
I know, right?
To be honest, Haruhiro had nearly forgotten Inui existed. If Inui never reappeared, that would have been that. It wouldn’t have even mattered.
“If you were gonna come back...” Kuzaku started, but trailed off.
Haruhiro could tell what he wanted to say. If Inui’d had time to scout, he could have, should have, helped with slaying the spinies. It was hard not to think so.
But they had managed without him, and things wouldn’t have changed drastically if he had stuck around. Even if Haruhiro didn’t agree that sneaking ahead to scout during the chaos was necessarily the right decision, well, maybe it wasn’t that bad.
Actually, according to Inui, he hadn’t initially gone down the passages in the rear of the back room. He had scouted down the side passages in the central room, then looped around to return through the back room’s passages. In other words, the passages were all connected, and formed a structure that could be called the second corridor.
At the midpoint of the second corridor was a set of stairs leading up to the upper level of a large hall. On the far side of the ground level in that hall there was a throne on a raised platform, which, according to Inui, had someone sitting on it. The hall had a great many lights hanging from the ceiling, mounted in the walls, and placed on the floors, so it was well illuminated. The figure on the throne had something like a crown on its head, wore a cloak studded with gold and silver, and carried a scepter. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the figure’s appearance, but it was clearly someone of high stature, or their remains. Inui said he hadn’t seen anything else moving in there.
The second floor of the hall was like a terrace sticking out from the wall, and there were stairs on either side of it leading down to the lower level. There was a landing about twenty steps down each set of stairs, then another twenty steps or so to the ground floor. Each step was about twenty centimeters. That put the distance to the landing at four meters, and then another four meters to the first floor from there, meaning the second floor was about eight meters up.
The hall itself was roughly thirty meters across, and more than fifty meters deep. The platform supporting the throne was about five meters high. There was no way they were going to be jumping up onto it. But according to Inui’s report, the platform had stairs on either side. If they were going to get up there, they would have to use those.
“Hmm...” Kimura murmured, glasses flashing, when Inui finished his report. “This is big, Shinohara-kun. This intel could even prove decisive.”
Shinohara held his chin as he nodded. “It seems like it. That must be the Lich King on the throne. We finally have the king who does not sleep, even in death, in our sights.”
“Heh... Thanks to my heroic feat!” Inui twisted his body around, raising and lowering his arms to strike some kind of pose.
“Weren’t you supposed to be the demon lord, or something, pal?” Ranta muttered, and Inui smiled faintly.
“A fallen hero. That is what the demon lord is...”
“So you’re going to fall now...” Haruhiro was sad he couldn’t resist quipping.
“Life is full of ups and downs!” Inui stood on his tiptoes, twisting his arms to form a figure eight. “Life is for living! And for dancing! I’ll live a life of fighting, and losing, and fighting again, and tasting sweet victory! The grand epic of a protagonist! The end of a hero! The terrifying awakening of a demon lord! Listen and behold this one of a kind saga!”
“Listen and behold...?” Haruhiro was about to say something, but stopped himself. Normally, you beheld with your eyes, not your ears, so “listen and behold” was a weird thing to say, but what good did pointing out every little mistake do him? Inui was weird in general. If he started talking normally, that’d actually be even scarier. Like the precursor to some incredible calamity.
The priests recast the support spells Protection and Assist on everyone in the platoon. Protection had the effect of raising the subjects’ vitality and natural capacity for healing. Simply put, it pepped everyone up. It might not get rid of their fatigue completely, but it helped to mitigate it.
Renji, Ron, Kuzaku, Yume, and the warriors from Orion all took a power nap. Even sleeping for a little while made a world of difference. Ranta bragged that when you got to his level, you could rest just fine while awake, and Haruhiro felt like there was no way he could sleep, so he sat around doing nothing instead.
Shinohara and Kimura spent the whole time talking. Haruhiro watched them, and it felt like Shinohara saw Kimura as different from all the others. Everyone else in Orion clearly looked up to him. Shinohara was polite and never condescending. But did he treat the other members of Orion as equals? No, not at all. This might have been an exaggeration, but Shinohara acted like his comrades in Orion were pets, and he was trying to love them all equally. He was probably a fair, kind, and good owner. But if one of his comrades picked a fight with him the way Ranta did to Haruhiro, maybe Shinohara wouldn’t tolerate that.
The members of Orion deferred to Shinohara. Their bond was tight. It probably made them a strong group.
But Haruhiro couldn’t place others under his command like that. Ranta, obviously, would be impossible. Kuzaku would follow someone he’d grown attached to anywhere. That made his loyalty dependent on the leader’s character, but it seemed unlikely he’d take to Shinohara. Merry hadn’t fit in with Orion’s vibe and had felt she had to leave. As for Yume, she was kind of a free spirit. Haruhiro wanted her to live as she pleased. Setora was anything but servile.
At a glance, Shinohara seemed like a forbearing and welcoming leader. But Kimura had said he tended to make decisions without consulting the others, and also that he acted logically.
Did the people in Orion know what Shinohara was really like?
Haruhiro couldn’t say, but Kimura was still with him despite knowing.
Maybe that was why.
When Shinohara was talking to Kimura alone, he was different than usual. His face wasn’t so expressive. Yeah. He didn’t smile much. He might laugh a little, but he didn’t force himself to wear that smile. He would frown and shake his head a lot too. The way he talked to Kimura also felt more familiar, less guarded.
Kimura must have been more to Shinohara than just a comrade. They were closer than that. In other words, they were friends.
So, supposing there was some conspiracy, the question that arose was whether Kimura truly didn’t know anything about it.
Kimura had said he was concerned for Shinohara, so he wanted to learn the truth. Was he just pretending not to know, acting like an informant for Haruhiro while manipulating him to gather information? Kimura might have been like an extension of Shinohara himself.
When Haruhiro was thinking that, Kimura looked his way, glasses flashing. Then he turned back to Shinohara and started talking about something again.
“What was that about?”
Kimura was too close to Shinohara. If they could take advantage of that, then good, but it was dangerous to trust him; though, actually, the guy was such an enigma, there wasn’t much chance of Haruhiro ever trusting him in the first place.
Some time later, the nappers awoke, and Shinohara declared it was time for them to head out.
The team headed through the passages in the rear of the back room to enter the second corridor. The second corridor had lights hanging from the ceiling, so it was dimly lit. This was probably where the spinies had been lined up. Haruhiro could see alcoves where they would have fit on either side of the wall. How long was the second corridor in total? If it was a hundred meters, and the walls were packed with spinies, there would be a considerable number of them. It was amazing the group had managed to smash them all.
Haruhiro, Inui, and a thief from Orion named Tsuguta went up the stairs, which were five meters across, and entered the large hall.
As explained, the second level was essentially a terrace. Fifteen meters across, five meters deep. There was a low parapet around the edge, and golden railing shone dully on top of it.
Haruhiro, Inui, and Tsuguta hid in the shadow of the parapet. They stuck their heads over the edge of the railing just a little, surveying the first floor. It was more or less as Inui had described, but it felt different seeing it in person. It was hard to do the grandiose sight of it justice. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If you could see it, you’d understand. But since you can’t, you won’t.
The being seated on the throne down on that platform above the first floor was the unmistakable ruler of this place. In life, he would have been the master of a kingdom. He had built a glittering palace in this land and no doubt sought to continue to rule it even in death. The lighting fixtures built into the walls and platform were ornate, and even if they were just gold plated, you would still need an immense amount of the stuff to make this many.
There was no doubt about it.
This was the throne room.
Haruhiro nodded to Tsuguta, who turned to head back.
Not long after, Tsuguta led Shinohara and the others up the stairs. Everyone stayed low, so as to remain hidden behind the parapet. The Lich King remained motionless on his throne.
“We sure he isn’t just dead?” Ranta asked in a whisper. He might have been joking, but no one reacted.
“Heh...” Inui gave Setora a passionate glance with his uncovered right eye. “If both of us survive this ordeal, I want you to become my infernal bride.”
“I refuse,” Setora declined instantly.
Go figure.
“Heh!” Inui began scratching his head. “I can feel the waves of darkness inside me, flaring up from within the shadowy depths...” Tokimune winked and slapped Inui on the back.
“Don’t sweat it. Someday, there’s bound to be a girl who gets your unique charm, Inui.”
I dunno about that, thought Haruhiro, but he kept it to himself. He also wished they’d save this nonsense for another time, but he knew better than to waste his breath telling the Tokkis that. Besides, if they were able to keep carrying on like normal right before the final battle, that was reassuring.
Haruhiro was feeling as tense as anyone would—or was he?
He wasn’t as excited as Ranta, who had shifted his mask aside and was licking his lips in anticipation.
“Okay...” Kuzaku nodded. It looked like he was trying to psyche himself up.
Yume, incredibly, looked like she was going to yawn, then covered her mouth to stop herself. Her eyes met Haruhiro’s, and she let out an embarrassed giggle.
Setora looked disinterested, and Merry seemed calm too.
Haruhiro was uneasy. How could he not be? There was no predicting how this fight would play out. Some injuries were going to be inevitable, but no matter what it took, he wanted to avoid losing any of his comrades.

Chapter end