Chapter 116: Infamy
As Zetto was busy preparing for the ‘desert’ that he would leave behind at the Academy. Two men stepped into the hall where the bitter and foul smell still lingered.
On one side, there was an old man with a long beard frowning, and on the other side, there was a young man with a sturdy physique.
The man bent his knees with a clatter as his armor collided, stood in front of the entrance and looked at the empty hall.
This place was not a place where emptiness could be felt as they remembered. It was more noisy and messy.
This was the information agency of the demons that had been mercilessly slaughtered by Zetto…precisely, by the shadow of the dark spirit Shade.
The man in golden armor brushed his hair and opened his mouth first.
“How is it, sir? Do you feel anything?”
The man who spoke in a sarcastic tone had a lion’s face with fierce fangs in the center of his armor.
His name was Zagoras.
That was his name as a demon.
His name as a human was Delion.
He was currently the vice-captain of the Golden Lion Knights of Teracia.
He said he was the vice-captain, but Captain Terlos Okentia was just his puppet.
When there were no subordinates, Terlos used to speak politely to him.
Even if Zagoras ridiculed Terlos as someone who sold his soul, he just smiled and sweated, and ‘incompetent’ Terlos, who experienced Zagoras’ fear, did not try to resist.
No matter how foolish he was, his life was precious. If it weren’t for Zagoras, he wouldn’t have been able to become a captain.
Zagoras was terribly vicious.
He was adept at manipulating humans with their desires and psychology, and enjoyed it.
“Oh, Helgenas…How can this be so terrible…?”
The old man sighed as he looked around the hall.
The old man was a demon summoned by Zagoras and one of the few long lived elementalists.
The chief ordered Zagoras to go ahead and dig up what happened here.
The chief was also the name of the legion commander and now that there is no Demon King, the legion commander ruled over the demons at the top.
Zagoras had to move his feet without saying anything, but he sensed the spirit’s energy as he looked around the hall, and he immediately called a demon who knew how to handle spirits.
The problem was the spirit energy that was felt from the walls, floors, and the entire hall.
The sticky energy was quite different from the human spirits that they occasionally encountered. Rather, it was a familiar energy for demons like Zagoras.
“So, what’s the conclusion?”
Zagoras got up on his knees and approached the old man.
“…”
The old man covered his mouth and was afraid to speak, but soon opened his mouth at Zagoras’ urging gaze.
“…As expected by Lord Zagoras, it is a dark spirit. And it seems like a high-ranking spirit. This place is…not empty. It is still here. The traces of cruel slaughter and the tombs of demons…It is so horrible that I can’t even speak about it. Judging from the traces, most of them seem to have been trampled and killed without much resistance. Oh, Helgenas… How can this happen…”
At the old man’s pitiful voice, Zagoras made an ‘ah.’ sound and scratched his head as if he had encountered a troublesome thing.
“So to summarize, a demon who uses a high-ranking dark spirit slaughtered dozens of demons alone…”
“What is the reason…?”
“It’s obvious…cannibalism. Some crazy bastard broke the taboo.”
Zagoras naturally continued the old man’s words and mentioned a word that was like a ‘disaster’ for demons.
Cannibalism.
Why did vicious demons fear this so much and regard it as a great sin and taboo?
There was one story handed down about cannibalism.
It was the story of a demon who wanted to become the Demon King himself and stood on top of countless corpses of demons.
This was impossible.
The Demon King was a supreme being and an absolute ruler who ruled over them as their king for demons.
The Demon King died in battle with the hero, and in his absence, he tried to rule all demons with one force. He was one of the few traitors in demon history.
Sometimes he heard that there were some demons who hid behind him and revered him, but real cannibalism was another story.
“‘The Nameless One’ has returned…”
The old man muttered and shook his hands tremblingly.
Nameless One
It was both a nickname and an alias for a madman who committed cannibalism and massacres.
Literally he had no name
What was the name of the demon, what it looked like, and even what kind of attack and skills it used, he couldn’t even know.
He was sentenced to record annihilation and a long time has passed since then.
The generation that could say that they experienced him directly was only the old demons called ‘elders’.
Some demons sometimes said this.
Is it really true that the ‘Nameless One’ is dead, or is he hiding somewhere and still killing demons and accumulating power?
The old man standing in front of Zagoras seemed to be a demon who had such a view.
As the old man bowed his head and shook his body, Zagoras just scratched his head and fell into thought.
‘There have been a lot of things going on lately… Should I get the body?’
The fact that their experimental body, Aizel Ludwig, lived was like a bolt from the blue.
He also heard that his colleague, Krektar, had died.
As soon as Zagoras heard the information that the Knights of the Saintess had been dispatched to the theater where ‘Oswald’, his human identity, was, he sent Terlos there to check it out.
According to Terlos’ stupid words, it seemed like an inspector and not Aizel killed Krektar.
Zagoras and his colleagues didn’t care much about Krektar’s death.
‘Is it hard enough to deal with Aizel… Now ‘The Nameless One’ appears?’
He thought ‘Aizel Ludwig’ was dead but she was alive and the fact that she was in ‘Innocence Academy’ made it difficult to deal with.
Aizel was the result of failure.
This ‘failure’ should never have been seen by the absolute legion commander.
For their ‘captain’, who rose to the right arm of the current legion commander, he was a thorn in his eye like no other.
This was also the case for Zagoras.
He had to say that he was walking a fairly smooth path now and was in a vice-captain position he had taken after a long and hard effort and time.
Isn’t the bottom of the lamp dark?
He was a demon who was the vice-captain of the demon-hunting knights, so there was no doubt about it, and Zagoras, who had a knack for handling magic, knew how to hide his energy so that he wouldn’t be noticed.
But even so, he had to avoid meeting the saintess, so he was avoiding Bernice somehow.
Zagoras muttered a curse as the situation was complicated in many ways.
Aizel Ludwig’s survival, Krektar death, the return of the Nameless One. It made him uneasy that bad things were happening one after another lately.
“Let’s go back. I’ll do the report.”
Zagoras turned his back sharply with those words and his cloak fluttered.
Anyway, the hall was empty.
The spirit’s energy was swaying everywhere, but there was no evidence left to identify the identity of the demon who committed cannibalism.
At best, demons who handled spirits were rare among demons, even more so if the spirit being handled is a high-ranking spirit.
Zagoras had to think that this alone was enough evidence to satisfy the chief.
The old man swallowed the words he couldn’t tell as Zagoras turned his back.
I wonder if this cruel demon who committed cannibalism deliberately left traces.
To the old man’s eyes, this whole hall looked like a kind of ‘warning letter’.
I gave Bernice some information about Delion, or Zagoras, but only enough not to arouse suspicion.
It would have been suspicious if I had said too much and I also had to filter out some visual information that I couldn’t recite.
But that would have been enough. Anyway, it was certain that Delion was a demon.
Bernice left me with a blessing that she couldn’t give me at the entrance ceremony and asked me not to overdo it for a while.
Oh, I could also get a small temporary crystal ball.
It was something like a cell phone in this world… but it was a very expensive item.
It consumed magic like crazy every time I contacted it, and it was an item like a money-eating hippo.
I didn’t have to contact them first, but they said it was to avoid situations like this time.
The situation was such that I was supposed to receive it after finishing the entrance ceremony.
I didn’t talk much with Bernice, especially about Sierra, and I missed the timing again this time.
A few days passed after that and I received an announcement that I would be heading to the desert in the south around when Edward’s class ended.
I was preparing for this.
Packing my luggage and looking around for things I might need at the general store… I spent my time quite frugally.
It was convenient since I didn’t have much to organize because I got a subspace pocket.
[Have you ever been to the desert?]
Sierra asked me while I was packing my luggage.
There was only one desert on the continent, so there was no need for a nickname and it was simply called desert.
“I’ve never been there but I heard it’s very hot. It is full of sand, the air feels hot everywhere and sandstorms can erupt at any moment. You can’t miss ancient ruins either.”
I was looking forward to this desert trip in my own way. Especially about ancient ruins.
The ruins were places that were not implemented in the game, and I wondered if I could step in now.
The first graders were scheduled to go hunting ‘otherworldly species’ in groups in the desert.
Otherworldly species are literally monsters from ‘another world’… It would be easy to think of it as such.
They were closely related to ancient ruins, and only near ruins did gates from other worlds open, so otherworldly species could only be seen in deserts as well.
‘In fact, there are monsters and robots that are unfamiliar to people of this world… but…’
Robots, machines, mechanics… Anyway, it’s a lump of scrap metal that looks like an era with more advanced technology than modern times.
It was strange to go hunting robots that appear in the desert…since it didn’t fit the genre of the game.
Fantasy and sci-fi are not very well matched, but if you add settings like otherworldly or something, it will fit.
That said the desert didn’t play a big role in the story.…At least that’s how it was in the game I experienced.
It was much closer than the north, so I thought we would use a carriage instead of an airship.
‘I’ll get some rest after coming back from the desert.’
I planned to take some time to meet the hero then and also take care of the events I need to take care of.
As I organized my luggage and planned at the same time, I smiled as I tightened the straps of my backpack.
I felt like things were going well lately and I hope things continue like this.
****
The hero Leon, who was reincarnated as a woman, or Rei, was currently confused.
In the quiet orphanage where everyone was asleep, she was screaming silently.
‘Damn… there’s no doll…’
She came back after finishing her physical training and was looking for a doll.
It was a rabbit doll the size of her body, called Becky, but the doll that was always in her place was nowhere to be seen.
She screamed while looking for the doll.
The doll was secretly placed in her arms by the director of the orphanage while she was sleeping.
‘It’s a gift, Rei.’
The director who pushed the doll into Rei’s arms whispered.
And then he watched Rei holding the doll in her arms with a warm smile.
Rei fell asleep while pretending to sleep. With a young child’s body, he couldn’t overcome the huge storm called ‘sleep’.
Besides, she felt good for a moment and the texture of the doll was fluffy.
After that, a few days passed and this was the situation.
Leon, who used to lie down well on the floor or dungeon floor without caring…Now became Rei who couldn’t sleep well without a doll.
She tore her hair out at that painful fact and eventually couldn’t overcome it and sneaked around the orphanage in the moonlight as if she were a cat looking for a doll.
“Ha… ha…”
She finally found it.
A child who lived with her in the orphanage hugged her doll as if it were her own and slept.
‘How dare you.’
Rei, who snatched the doll from the child’s arms roughly, hugged the doll and ran back to her place with a thud.
It was a very rude act for an adult man to snatch a doll from a child’s arms while trying to sleep, but Rei was a child’s body and… she didn’t have time to worry about that right now.
Rei lay down in her place, covered herself with a blanket, and hugged the doll tightly.
‘This is it…’
Rei smiled and soon started to make a snoring sound.
She fell asleep and probably had a good dream.
…Living with a young child’s body was never an easy thing.