Hero and Demon Lord

The summit of Lindholm Sacred Mountain was, just as the spirits had let slip in passing, a place harsh by environment.

Climate and temperature aside, there were times when the air itself carried an odd, weighted heaviness — sacred mountain, indeed.

On top of that, there were other reasons the harshness of nature came home.

From time to time, creatures Merea did not know would pass overhead.

Those creatures often bore shapes one could not help calling monster or beast — and they would set his chest catching with a low scrape of dread.

On one such day, among the creatures passing overhead, Merea saw a figure he, of all things, recognised.

— That shape — I've seen something like that before…

No mistake. — A dragon.

Lindholm Sacred Mountain, even within its surrounding range one of the higher peaks, on certain days drove its tip clean through the cloud layer.

When the clouds dropped lower, that was when it happened.

Then, winged creatures — which apparently liked to fly above the cloud as a marker — became visible. On that day, among them, the figure of a dragon.

At the sight of it — what he had only ever seen in fairy-tales — Merea felt his chest, in spite of him, quicken.

On the other side, the dragon, looking at the hundred spirits at Lindholm Sacred Mountain's summit and the single mystery boy of physical form mixed in among them —

"Hm — those Heroic Spirits over there have done something amusing again, have they."

— a well-carrying, light-toned voice — said it as it descended to the summit.

---

A great pair of wings beating, halting the flight-body to a stop, and finally a soft touch-down.

A dragon stood arrayed at Lindholm Sacred Mountain's summit.

Merea was, by the dragon's force, in spite of himself, overwhelmed.

"Whoa… a real dragon. A dragon."

"More precisely — a 〈Sky Dragon (Teishia)〉. There are also Land Dragons (Reirnote); take care to remember the difference."

"Ah — y-yes."

About a week had passed since Merea's rebirth.

Life was, surprisingly, on the rails.

He was managing on a prepared cave, frozen mystery-meats, and nuts — eating his way through.

The basics of subsistence had, evidently, been laid out in advance by the spirits.

For Merea, sitting through difficult talk while shaking under the sacred mountain's bitter wind was no small labour.

So at first, he kept the spirits' talk in moderation and concentrated, day by day, on settling into the environment.

"And — why is a flesh-and-blood child in such a fraught place."

The dragon tilted its head.

From among the spirits, the man of androgynous beauty — 〈Flander Crow〉, the one who had brought Merea here — stepped out, soft smile on him, and said it to the dragon.

"He is our son."

"Ah — that 〈otherworld-grass〉 business. To think it actually succeeded. — Perhaps it was a stroke of luck that the Heroic Spirits with any real power happened to be the ones left here."

"Mind, ex-heroes, every one of us, who failed in life."

"…Right."

To Flander's slightly self-mocking smile, the dragon's voice dropped a little.

"Even so, a markedly peculiar shape, this child."

The dragon, in the next beat, returned its gaze to Merea.

"Snow-white hair. Eyes the colour of fresh blood. This one looks rather more like the wraith, in fact."

"The white hair — 〈Leilas〉's factor. The red eyes — my factor. With various Heroic Spirits' factors combined like that, it's perhaps slightly strange. But Leilas's hair, you'll grant — is beautiful?"

"Ah — yes, that. The hair of the snow-white hero, called the peerless beauty — would, without question, be beautiful. — Now then. That Leilas?"

"— Has gone."

"What?"

"Leilas saw this Merea's birth through, and went. For her, the lingering regret was, evidently, not being betrayed and killed, but dying without being able to bear a child."

"…I — see."

The dragon let a slightly forlorn expression up.

A dragon's face, but Merea could read it.

"It will be lonely. But for the lot of you, this is a piece of fortune…"

"Yes. If the regret is gone, that, surely, is a happy thing."

While Flander and the dragon spoke, Merea was, in the back of his head, predicting the spirits' origins.

Hero, and Heroic Spirit.

Flander had called himself, slightly self-deprecatingly, only a figure in an old hero-tale, but listening to the dragon, that self-deprecation seemed perhaps overdone.

That the spirits gathered here had once been called heroes, and that they remained on this place as Heroic Spirits — was, evidently, the truth of it.

"Spirits, also, are not so easy to read. To think that intense joy would erase one's existence."

Lindholm Sacred Mountain, in this world, is a peculiar place.

A realm cut off from the rest, where the dead — for once — were permitted to make merry.

At the same time — being a place where regret-bearing souls could do certain things, the living rarely visit.

— Mind, Flander and the others are normal, though.

Across the week he had spent, Merea had come to know them.

They were no different from the living.

— Or — having not yet met any human-shaped living in this world, he could not declare it firmly, but at least, they were no different from the living of the place he had lived in before.

Per the Heroic Spirits, however, on the layers below the summit there were many spirit-bodies hostile to the living.

— By virtue of their regret.

"At any rate — that brings us to ninety-nine."

"That, in time, I'll be asking Merea to handle."

"Will he be the saviour of the Heroic Spirits, then."

"I do not know. I would, only, that he become a fine hero."

"That, then, is the regret common to the lot of you. Lives that, sacrificing the self for the world, could not, at the close, end as heroes — undue lives. — But do not forget: the world moves. The world changes. By which, somewhere along the way, the future you wished for may, possibly, be no longer obtainable."

"From the world-watching 〈Sky Dragon (Teishia)〉, that carries, somehow, weight."

"Ah. — Mind, how this Merea-or-other turns out is a thing that interests me too. Next time the cloud drops low, I'll come round to look in."

"I'll thank you for it. Merea is unlikely to come by friends for some time."

— Bachelor-status declared by my parent.

"Living folk who would pay a sacred mountain a visit are rarities, after all."

"Yes. Right then — until next time."

"Yes."

On that, the dragon flew off again into the heavens.

— Heroic Spirits, on their own, were strange — but this world appears to be markedly fantastical.

Merea, learning that creatures that, in his prior life, had only existed in human imagination did exist here, felt his chest quicken — and, at the same time, a little uneasy.

Imagination is mighty.

Should one come into opposition with him, would he be able to live out this world.

---

— I've found I can live. Provided I'm prepared to die. — …Hold on. Is that not putting the cart before the horse? Reads as if I'm trying to die in order to live!

A further week after the Sky Dragon's visit.

Merea was, that day, running about the summit of sacred mountain Lindholm.

That is — chased by a fireball, burning fiercely.

"Oi! Run for your life! Now that you've settled in, training!"

"For what's sake…!"

"For the sake of becoming a hero, of course!"

— Tyrannical.

After listening to the Heroic Spirits' talk, he had learned what they had called him here for.

— They want to make me into a hero.

A nation-saving hero.

A world-saving hero.

A someone-saving hero.

Various flavours, but, fundamentally, hero is a flashy title.

The Heroic Spirits gathered here had, once, been called such.

But there had been grim incidents, and each had, evidently, met a tragic death at the close.

Betrayed by their own side, made human pillars, used and discarded.

In stories of that tragic kind, the word 〈Demon Lord〉 came in, time to time.

In this world, since older days, there is, evidently, a word with a special meaning — 〈Demon Lord〉.

The reason for the vague phrase special meaning is that what 〈Demon Lord〉 actually points to has, evidently, differed by era.

The details, he had not yet asked.

But what the Heroic Spirits all said, in chorus, was —

〈Demon Lord〉 is a label that can be slapped on and swapped out.

— that line.

The Heroic Spirits seemed to carry bitter feeling around the word, and would not speak of it in detail.

For that reason, how it tied into the tragedies was, also, not landing cleanly.

Even so, gathering fragmentary information and inferring the meaning-tendency of the word 〈Demon Lord〉:

*— A being that is mighty, and the incarnation of evil.

Once, by way of answer-checking, he had asked Flander.

Flander, on a wry smile then —

"Not on the mark, but not far off it,"

— had answered.

To other Heroic Spirits, when he asked —

"In the old days, yes,"

or,

"There were times when it pointed to that, yes,"

or,

"By the time I was alive, the meaning had already shifted,"

— each answer, somehow not landing.

The meaning had shifted?

From what meaning to what meaning?

He went round the Heroic Spirits asking, and ended back, finally, at Flander.

Flander, then, on a reluctant expression —

"From a word pointing to a being that is mighty, and the incarnation of evil, to a word pointing simply to one who is mighty."

— gave him that.

Did the incarnation-of-evil meaning fall away from 〈Demon Lord〉 by itself — or, by someone's design.

— What, exactly, is a Demon Lord.

In the end, that hazy feeling sat in a corner of Merea's chest.

---

"Is this level of training actually necessary at this age?!"

"It is, it is — enormously. What if your opponent's a Demon Lord, eh? Demon Lords have plenty of houses pushing their own power-research. Some run elite-education from infancy on; some carry esoteric formulae passed down. In my time, that's how it was."

These days, in fact, that word was coming out of the Heroic Spirits' mouths more often.

For his part, Merea had begun, by his own separate route, to gather information on 〈Demon Lord〉 little by little.

"This Demon Lord business — what kind of being it is, is still a bit vague to me, mind!"

"Ah… mind, that part Flander will, in due time, walk you through."

"That deflection is foul play…!"

Merea, dodging the fireball, said it on a critical note.

"— Mind — these days, the Demon Lords are, apparently, in decline."

That was information about Demon Lords obtained by his separate route.

Also fragmentary, but information he had not heard from a Heroic Spirit.

To Merea's leading question, the broad-bodied male Heroic Spirit overseeing his training — 〈Tyrant〉 — eyes rounded in surprise, replied —

"That sort of talk — who'd you hear it from?"

Then, in the next beat, Tyrant's face shifted to a figured-it register —

"— Ah — 〈Cortista〉."

That was the name of the Sky Dragon who had visited the summit of Lindholm Sacred Mountain the week before.

Merea's separate information source was not a Heroic Spirit — it was the Sky Dragon Cortista.

"That one knows plenty, certainly."

"Only that much I've heard, mind — whoa!"

A fireball running past Merea's feet.

Merea, stepping over it, continued.

"And — what is the read?"

Tyrant fell silent for a beat, as if thinking, but —

"Even if they're in decline, something similar will come up. The name will just shift."

— a line that, oddly, carried real weight came out of Tyrant's mouth.

Before Merea could ask what he meant, Tyrant pressed straight on.

"The word doesn't matter. The point is — when that kind of mighty being comes into opposition with you, and, say, lays a hand on someone of yours — you'd rather have the strength to defend yourself, no?"

"W-well — that's true, sure…"

That, surely, was the meaning of this training.

Training to make him into a hero who could defend someone.

"Then keep at it. It's all right — your grain is good. Even thrown into an environment like this, you bite back. — Once you've died once, the resolve is different — the resolve to live, anyway."

Tyrant, fast-talking, pivoted topics on him.

Merea, registering the deliberate pivot, but also finding the fireballs circling him spiking up in flight-speed as if to tell him no idle talk, let himself be carried along.

"I don't recall being given any time to set my resolve, mind…!"

Merea carried no regret toward his prior life. That had been all-out as it stood.

The years had not been many, but the feeling of I did what I could held.

But the half-life-up-to-death lived in a body that would not move freely had been carved into his head as a deep sorrow.

So — to be born, like this, into a body that moved — he was grateful from the bottom of his chest.

If he died next time and transmigration of some sort happened again, there was no guarantee the destination would be a moving body.

— I being I may, possibly, only hold to this time.

Carrying knowledge and memory across, crossing worlds like this, may be, this once only — that thought too.

Thinking of that, Merea could be all-out about living the now.

A desperate edge that came, perhaps, of having experienced transmigration.

"Right — two more hours, then."

"T-two hours?!"

"It's all right, it's all right — you've adjusted to the altitude. I'll be over with Flander playing shatranj — until then, keep dodging fireballs. Seeya."

So saying, the broad-bodied Heroic Spirit 〈Tyrant〉 turned on his heel, waving a hand.

Where Tyrant was headed, on his usual smile, was Flander, watching Merea's flight-from-fire with visible enjoyment.

*— Just watching.

Not, in any sense, trying to stop it.

— Flander, on that smile, has a fairly sadistic streak too, frankly…

Merea, watching the picture with distaste, —

"Whoa! Close! Hair's about to scorch!"

— spent the remaining two hours dodging fireballs.