novelraw Vol 3. Chapter 691: Bonus Part: Ryo and Abel’s Journey Home (19)
Vol 3. Chapter 691: Bonus Part: Ryo and Abel’s Journey Home (19)
0691 A Strange Tale of the Demon Men Cult I
“That light-blue-haired man... he was the one who killed our previous chief.”
The three men muttered it with faces full of rage.
“That light-blue-haired one was unquestionably a servant of the Demon Men. Your previous chief fought him?”
“Yes. For years... No one but the previous chief could fight him on even terms.”
The man in the center answered Abel’s question.
“That’s incredible. That thing was a monster, no question. The fact that he could fight it at all...”
“No...”
Abel praised their previous chief, but the three men answered without conviction.
“Compared to when he fought the previous chief...”
“He’s become unbelievably stronger...”
“To be honest, he was nowhere near that strong before.”
The three of them said it plainly.
Their faces had gone pale.
They had just witnessed an enemy who had grown absurdly stronger than before.
He had been strong then too, of course.
In the end, the previous chief had been defeated.
But the strength he had now...
No, the speed he had now...
“He was unbelievably fast.”
Ryo nodded too.
“His sword was sharp, sure... but enough for you to put it that way?”
“Yes. It was his movement... I think. When he appeared and when he left, even my sonar couldn’t track him.”
Ryo’s face was tight with frustration.
“That... he really moved in and out normally?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like that baron from the Empire. Wasn’t it some kind of
“No way...”
Ryo stared at Abel in surprise.
True, it had felt more natural to think he had suddenly appeared by
That was how unnatural his movement had been.
“Come to think of it, that red-clothed Demon Man from the Western Countries, Merlin, specialized in
Ryo murmured it as though the memory had just surfaced.
“Right, right, and the devil Jean-Jacques was good at
Thought followed thought straight out of his mouth.
“The Demon Men can use the same six attributes we use in magic—no, at the very least the four attributes of wind, fire, earth, and water. So maybe my hypothesis that the magical power of the other four attributes branched off from gravity isn’t wrong after all. Would gravity-based magic fall under the category of ‘non-attribute magic,’ meaning that the other four attribute magics branch out from non-attribute magic? Of course, that also connects to my hypothesis that magical power is gravity located in extra dimensions... If Demon Men can handle gravity directly, does that mean they can use the four attribute magics better than we can? No, that’s too much of a leap.”
He was not speaking loudly.
Even so, neither Abel nor the three men could say anything. They could only watch Ryo.
“In physics, every ‘force’ in this world can be divided into four categories. The strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, and gravity. We can probably think of the four attribute magics as all belonging to electromagnetism. In other words, they come from the movement of electrons around atomic nuclei. The strong and weak forces act only over an extremely tiny range—even smaller than the atom, only around the atomic nucleus that makes up the atom itself. They’re not something we ever perceive or need in everyday life, magic included. It was said that, before long, those three forces—the strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetism—might all be expressible through a unified equation. Right, the so-called unified field theory. But even if things advanced that far, gravity alone would still remain... incomprehensible. Even the greatest geniuses among geniuses, the physicists whose names would go down in history, still had no real prospect of producing an equation that included all four forces, gravity included... And to produce an equation is the same thing as saying, ‘We understand it.’ Which means that if no equation can be made, then it has not been understood.”
The fusion of theoretical physics with magic and magical power—
that was something only Ryo could do.
“I think gravity has to be considered something fundamentally different. Compared to the other three forces, it’s far too weak... weak enough to call almost an error term. And yet no one can ignore it. The other three forces seem as though they might be explained together someday, but gravity alone shows no sign of joining them.”
Ideas continued pouring out of him, one after another.
“The four forces, gravity included, were supposedly once a single force at the birth of the universe. Then as temperature and pressure fell, gravity split off first, then the strong force, then the weak force, and finally the four forces emerged separately. But is that really true? Is it wrong to think from the center of gravity instead? What if gravity is the main current, and the strong force, weak force, and electromagnetism branched off from it? No... I’d have to go back and reexamine that from the standpoint of proper theoretical physics... Ah, if only I had come to this world with all those beautiful equations still perfectly memorized...”
Ryo closed his eyes and tried to summon up the equations buried in the depths of his fading memory.
His expression was calm, but there was something about it that could just as well have been called delight.
“Hey, Ryo.”
“Huh?”
At Abel’s voice, Ryo’s eyes snapped open in surprise.
Abel and the three men were all staring at him.
Only then did he realize he had been speaking his thoughts aloud the whole time.
That was a little embarrassing.
“Ah... um... So that man just now was a servant, but does that mean there’s a real Demon Man around too?”
A question thrown out to cover his embarrassment.
“There isn’t.”
But Abel answered immediately.
“What? How can ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) you say that so definitely?”
“Because if there were, they’d already have been wiped out with ease.”
“I see.”
A servant of the Demon Men was strong.
Terribly strong.
Strong enough that it was almost impossible for humans to resist.
But the true Demon Men themselves were stronger still.
So strong that anyone at all would understand that resistance itself was futile.
“Either way, I want to hear more.”
“Please, come to our village.”
At Abel’s words, the man in the center invited them.
The two men at his sides nodded too.
Abel glanced at Ryo.
Ryo gave a small nod back.
Naturally, he had no objection.
They needed to rest somewhere anyway.
No—at worst, Ryo and Abel could endure any amount of hardship.
But neither of them wanted Andalusia to suffer for it.
Then Ryo realized something.
“Um... I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I?”
“Ah...”
Abel looked surprised at Ryo’s words.
That was right.
Neither of them had actually given their names.
“I am Abel. And this is Ryo.”
“I’m Ryo. Nice to meet you.”
Abel and Ryo introduced themselves.
Though Abel’s name already seemed to be known, so it was mostly for Ryo’s sake.
“My name is Ronja. These two are Batta and Hatta.”
The apparent leader, who had been answering their questions, gave his own name and introduced the other two.
“All right, then. We’ll impose on your village. The giant ice cargo can stay outside if need be, but I’d appreciate it if the two horses could be brought in.”
“Of course. And those... ice loads as well are welcome inside the village.”
Ronja nodded at Abel’s request.
And so, Ryo and Abel came to stay in a frontier village locked in conflict with the Demon Men cultists.
*****
After another thirty minutes of travel, the village came into view.
“That is our Farafao Village.”
Ronja’s guiding voice sounded just a little proud.
“A village...?”
“Shouldn’t that be called a towering fortress wall...?”
Abel and Ryo stared at the exterior of this “Farafao Village” in astonishment.
Simple, honest astonishment.
They had heard the word village, so what they had pictured was something gentle and pastoral.
A village that fit the word idyllic perfectly.
Because it had hostile enemies, Ryo and Abel had assumed it might have a fence.
But at most, they had imagined something like a stockade built of logs.
The reality was different.
What they saw was wall.
And unmistakably stone wall.
What rose in Ryo’s mind was the stonework of Japanese castles.
More specifically, neatly cut fitted stone, made from stones cut mostly into clean quadrilateral forms and stacked together.
The face of the wall traced a gentle curve, becoming steeper as it rose.
The classic fan-shaped slope.
It was beautiful.
“This is art.”
After the initial shock, Ryo let out a sigh of admiration at its beauty.
“Well, I can see it’s impressive, but...”
Apparently Abel was not nearly as moved.
“Honestly, as a king, I’m not sure it reflects well on you that you can look at stone walls this beautiful and not be deeply impressed.”
“Even if you say that... they look nothing like the walls around the royal capital...”
“Obviously not. With that level of understanding, I almost feel obliged to lecture you for an hour or so on Kato Kiyomasa’s Kiyomasa style.”
For some reason, Ryo sounded utterly aggrieved.
Kiyomasa style referred to a method of stone wall construction that made the lower section gentle for stability while adding curvature higher up.
Ryo, who came from Kyushu, still remembered being moved by the stonework of Kumamoto Castle, which Kato Kiyomasa had built.
This village wall called that to mind.
That artistic stone wall aside, the question remained.
The wall had to be over five meters high.
As a “fence” protecting a “village,” it was simply too massive, too strange.
“This kind of thing should not be possible in the first place.”
“Well, I’ve certainly never heard of it, but... there’s nothing wrong with a village having huge walls, is there?”
“Nothing wrong with it. It’s just economically impossible.”
“Is it?”
“In simple terms, it’s the same reason poor people don’t live in mansions.”
“I feel like I understand that, and also don’t...”
Even Abel seemed unsure whether Ryo’s comparison really worked.
“Well, in any case, this stonework is magnificent.”
Ryo nodded in satisfaction.
“The construction itself was directed by our previous chief.”
“Oh!”
“The chief said he meant to build yagura at the corners of the walls, but he passed away before he could.”
“What a tragedy.”
Ryo looked startled at Ronja’s explanation.
Naturally, the real source of that surprise was the thought that the previous chief might have been a reincarnator.
“The plans too? Were those from your previous chief?”
“No, the design was based on existing plans.”
“Plans?”
“There used to be a castle in this region called Kunmamo Castle. It had a very unusual design... or so I’ve heard. A shape not seen elsewhere in Darwei either—truly a special kind of castle. Using its plans as a reference, we built up the stone walls, and the intention was to raise yagura on top.”
“Kunmamo... Castle...”
The word that rose in Ryo’s mind was, of course, Kumamoto Castle...
“I-I absolutely have to see this Kunmamo Castle...”
At Ryo’s words, Ronja answered with an apologetic look.
“Kunmamo Castle no longer exists.”
The look on Ryo’s face at that moment—
if one had to give it a title, nothing but Despair would do.
“No...”
“Yes. It was attacked by the Demon Men cult and destroyed five years ago.”
“How could this happen!”
At Ronja’s explanation, Ryo twisted his face with undisguised frustration.
But after a while, he lifted his face again.
“Kunmamo Castle may have been destroyed once. But one day, it will return without fail. I will make that prophecy here and now—it will live again.”
Ryo said it with absolute conviction.
“In fact, there was a village near Kunmamo Castle. Four years ago, a rich iron deposit was discovered there, and in recent years it has grown rapidly into a large town.”
“Oh! So the will of Kunmamo Castle was not extinguished after all. What is true and solid is carried on.”
“Why are you so emotionally invested in Kunmamo Castle?”
Watching Ryo celebrate its future revival with great conviction, Abel had no idea what was going on.
Naturally, he had no way of knowing that Ryo was overlapping Kunmamo Castle with Kumamoto Castle in his mind.
“Even Kumamoto Castle, which collapsed in the earthquake, was restored by human hands. So too has the spirit of Kunmamo Castle, destroyed by the Demon Men cultists, been carried on by people!”
For some reason, Ryo thrust his right fist high into the air.
Abel, as always, watched with cool detachment.
But Ronja, Batta, and Hatta all wore faintly awkward expressions.
Ryo noticed and asked:
“Um... why do the three of you look like that?”
“The town that grew there... it is now called Juraju. And Juraju is indeed flourishing. But they have absolutely no intention of restoring Kunmamo Castle...”
“What?”
“Our previous chief appealed to them. He urged them to restore Kunmamo Castle. But the people of Juraju refused. I believe that was four years ago, right when the ore deposit was discovered and they became too busy developing that instead...”
“Ah...”
Ryo gave a small, sorrowful shake of his head.
Of course, he had no desire to condemn the people of Juraju.
He understood that it too was a choice.
And yet...
“It can’t be helped, Abel!”
“Me?”
Abel blinked, startled by the sudden turn.
“We’ll restore Kunmamo Castle with our own hands!”
“No, hold on. Things like that depend on how the people who live there feel, don’t they? If they aren’t interested and we rush ahead on our own, nothing good will come of it.”
“Ghn...”
Abel’s sound reasoning shut Ryo down.
At that point, Ronja added:
“In place of the people of Juraju, who chose not to rebuild it, the previous chief tried to restore Kunmamo Castle here in this village.”
“I see!”
Ryo came back to life at once.
“So these towering walls are proof that this place inherited the will of Kunmamo Castle. How magnificent.”
“Well, when you put it like that... yeah, it really is something.”
Ryo trembled with joy, while Abel looked up at the immense wall once more and nodded.
The three men looked delighted as they watched the two of them.
At last, the five people, two horses, and five
“This is magnificent! This curve—there’s just something about it.”
Ryo lavishly praised the arc traced by the stone wall.
“It really does feel like a wall looming over you.”
Abel was impressed by its height.
“Open the gate!”
When Ronja shouted, the gate opened inward from both sides.
The gate itself was wooden, but its surface had been plated with iron.
“A measure against fire arrows?”
“Probably. A wooden gate alone could be burned down.”
Abel nodded at Ryo’s comment.
Naturally, the gates of Kumamoto Castle that Ryo knew were wooden.
As the group passed through the gate...
“Ronja, you made it back!”
A young woman who looked only just of age called out happily.
“Chief, we had a remarkable encounter outside.”
That young woman was apparently the current chief.
Ronja turned and introduced them.
“As you can see, this is King Abel.”
“Oh...”
People gathered around.
Every face among them showed shock.
Standing before Abel, the chief bowed her head.
“I am Anju, chief of Farafao Village. King Abel, I hope you will remember me.”
“I’m Abel. Ronja told me about the previous chief. Though a servant of the Demon Men attacked us almost immediately, so that was some introduction.”
Abel said it with a laugh.
The villagers seemed shocked to hear it.
They began murmuring among themselves.
“That servant of the Demon Men... could it have been...”
“Yes. The light-blue-haired one.”
“My father’s killer!”
At Abel’s answer, Anju squeezed out the words with her face twisted in pain.
“I see. So the previous chief was your father, Anju.”
“Yes...”
“He told me we would meet again one day.”
“What?!”
“That stuck with me a little. I’d appreciate it if you let me stay in this village for a while.”
“Of course!”
Though Anju’s eyes widened in surprise at Abel’s request, her answer came at once.
Ryo and Abel, along with their two beloved horses, were welcomed into Farafao Village.
*****
“I am Ryo Mihara, Duke Rondo, first retainer to King Abel.”
“Oh...”
“Let us all work together to support King Abel!”
“Ohhh!”
The villagers of Farafao enthusiastically responded to Ryo’s grand declaration.
“Come on now, Ryo, have a drink first!”
“Oh—oh, easy there—”
“Come on, down it in one go!”
Ryo drained it in a single breath.
“Ohhh!”
“What a drinker!”
“Just what you’d expect from King Abel’s foremost retainer!”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really.”
The villagers and Ryo were in full swing at the drinking feast.
Abel watched it from a slight distance away,
giving a small shrug.
Standing beside him and explaining various things was Ronja.
“Sorry about my father...”
“Don’t worry about it. Banjo, was it? Ryo’s basically a born charmer.”
Ronja apologized because his father had poured drink after drink into Ryo’s mug, and Abel laughed it off, saying Ryo would be fine.
But then Abel’s eyes drifted to a woman sitting farther away, quietly raising her cup alone.
“Anju...”
“Yes. The chief has been like that ever since last year.”
Ronja answered Abel’s remark.
His expression held both loneliness and grief.
“Until things are settled with the Demon Men cult in some form, she may not be able to move forward.”
“That’s troublesome.”
Abel frowned at Ronja’s words.
If it were only the cultists, something could be done.
But they had a servant among them.
A monster that could stand against thousands—tens of thousands—of humans all by itself.
Abel gave a small shake of his head and turned his attention back to the map spread out in front of him.
“That town that grew up near Kunmamo Castle... Juraju, was it? Is it really that large?”
“Yes. This village is large for a village, but even so, our population is only around five hundred at most. Juraju, on the other hand, is nearing a population of one hundred thousand.”
“One hundred thousand? That’s huge.”
Abel was startled.
At the same time, though, he tilted his head.
There had been no town of that size anywhere along the road they had taken.
“The road you took followed the north bank of the South River northward... and then, from what I heard, turned northwest partway through. So you must have come by this road.”
As he said that, Ronja traced a line across the open map with his finger.
“Farafao Village is around here on the map.”
What he indicated was the upper left edge of the map, almost at the very border.
“So this really is the edge of Darwei.”
“Yes. To be honest, you could say it’s right at the limit of where Darwei’s central authority still reaches.”
“Authority?”
“Yes. Juraju—the town that grew large because of the iron deposit I mentioned earlier—has an outpost of the Northwestern Garrison stationed outside it. About four thousand troops are there. This is frontier country, so there are bandits and brigands and the like. They’re there to eliminate them.”
“I see.”
Abel nodded at Ronja’s explanation.
Any nation above a certain size would have frontier regions.
And compared to the place where the central government sat, frontier regions inevitably suffered worse public order.
That was why one of the measures of a state’s governing ability was the condition of law and order in its frontiers.
But to stabilize law and order, some kind of force was always necessary—
an army, or police, or something of that kind.
Of course, it had to be force that could be controlled.
And it also had to be force with real strength behind it.
The two of them did not know it.
That very night, the outpost of the Northwestern Garrison was attacked.