"What, what is this?! What happened to my eyes? Or have I gone mad?"
Dehashuram was horrified at the spectacle before his eyes.
"Ah, excuse me."
At that moment, surprisingly, one of Azadin's companions, Jiswa, approached.
"Y-you are?"
Why is this bastard here?
Azadin's party was only three people. Then why is one of them here? Does that mean the other two attacked the Sea Serpent Nagas' encampment all by themselves?
As Dehashuram was reeling, this fellow said something outrageous.
"Ah, Master Azadin sent me. Since the promise seems likely to be fulfilled, he told me to load enough food and water onto the boat we'll be borrowing."
"Huh!?"
Dehashuram was so dumbfounded that words failed him.
'So, he's saying it's only natural that he'll win, so he sent one of the three to prepare supplies?'
Meanwhile, Azadin had already skewered a Naga who had leapt at him with a fire spit, drove its head-first into the bonfire, and then moved on to seek his next prey.
"With all due respect, you have made an excellent choice, Lord Dehashuram."
"Indeed, Shati."
Dehashuram could not deny Shati's words.
"So this is the power of one who is said to be a Herald's clansman and the disciple of the Demon King Kazas. Astonishing. When we surrounded him at the pier, I should have disarmed him and demanded he hand over the copy of the Book of the Divine King. No, no… had I done so, my head would have been the first to roll."
The moment of the pier, when they had surrounded Azadin, had been his weakest—yet also Dehashuram's own most vulnerable moment.
"Prepare the ship. It's to our advantage to send him off quickly. To have treated him by the custom of hospitality was divine providence indeed. As expected, the disciple of the Demon King Kazas, whose fame shook the Naga Empire."
Originally, Dehashuram had invited Azadin under the custom of hospitality because he had judged him to be a weakling he could dispose of at will.
It was arrogance, the leisure of the strong.
But, watching Azadin tear through the Sea Serpent Nagas like a whirlwind, he realized it had been wise not to fight him rashly.
"Shati."
"Yes, Naga Raja."
"Convey my message to him."
"…Understood."
***
Azadin was growing weary as he faced the Sea Serpent Nagas' champions.
The Sea Serpent Nagas, with terrible strength and ferocity, were hacking apart the undead that Scott had created—the corpses of their comrades only moments before—as they charged at Azadin.
At first Scott had mocked them with corpse burst magic, but that spell consumed an extreme amount of mana.
"Captain, I'm running… out of mana."
"Yeah. Time to retreat. What about Jiswa's situation?"
Azadin posed the question to the Emperor's Voice.
[Jiswa and Shati have prepared a boat beneath the coastal cliff's dune. The Naga Raja keeps his word.]
"Is that so? Then let's fall back there."
Azadin widened the distance, using the wall of undead as cover, and fired his bow. He had long since run out of arrows, so now he used his short bow to shoot stones from the ground, or the horns and spiny fins of the Sea Serpent Nagas.
But the larger stones had already been fired away, and within reach there were few left suitable to launch.
The Sea Serpent Nagas' skin and scales were thick, so only stones of considerable weight had any effect; lighter ones were useless.
"Time to retreat. Hold the rear."
"Got it, Captain! But once I use this, I'll be completely drained of mana."
Scott poured the last of his mana into driving the undead berserk. Leaving the frenzied undead rampaging behind them, he fled quickly alongside Azadin. Usually bound to a wheelchair, once Scott began to run he could manage short bursts of speed fairly well.
But still…
"Hah… hah… o-oxygen's running out!"
"Your stamina is truly lacking."
"When you've got a lot of muscle, hah… hah… you need more oxygen. Oh, oxygen means the air, Captain. Besides, my brain demands as much as any muscle…"
"Don't talk, just breathe."
"Huff, huff… h-high intelligence requires that much more oxygen…"
"I said stop talking and breathe. Do you really want to chatter that badly?"
Azadin descended the slope of the coastal cliff, reaching the boat lit by a torch. On the boat, Jiswa and Shati were waiting.
"Why isn't Shati still among the Nagas?"
"Well, the thing is…"
Shati looked troubled.
Right now, she feared her own kin. Her rank was low, she had failed her mission, and she had cooperated—however unwillingly—with Azadin, an outsider, thereby ruining the Nagas' business.
In this situation, she felt safer at Azadin's side than among her own people.
"The Naga Raja taught me magic, so I could guide this small boat. Without my magic, rowing a little boat like this all the way to Bruma would take ages. So I had no choice but to come along, don't get the wrong idea."
"Is that so? A shame. I thought at last you might return to the embrace of your kin."
"Th-that's true? But, well, it's not like the Naga Raja could dispatch other subordinates, right? Anyway, the Naga Raja said he was grateful you avenged his servant's death. Though he also said it was perhaps too much…"
Dehashuram, the Naga Raja, had asked Azadin to look for his gardener's son, and if he could not find him, to avenge him. But surely he had not imagined that Azadin and Scott alone would slaughter so many Sea Serpent Nagas.
As the Naga of the Water Snake Tribe, Dehashuram took satisfaction in the Sea Serpent Nagas' losses, but he also needed the Bruma Kingdom to suffer greatly. The ideal outcome was mutual destruction. But here, Azadin had already inflicted devastating losses upon the Naga host.
"They'd be marching on Bruma eventually anyway, so cutting down their numbers beforehand is hardly a bad thing. But this won't be their only outpost, so we'd better hurry to Bruma, prepare defenses, and rally the Blue Sky Order. So, Shati. That's all you heard from Nagashuram?"
"No. He gave a message. The Demon King Kazas was a figure even the Naga Empire feared, and he was also a traitor to the Naga Empire. But at the height of his triumphs, when he was pressing forward, he had to halt his advance because of the side effects of the Kazas Haeseo. If what you use is the Kazas Haeseo, then won't you share the same weakness?"
"Hm. Well, for now, I don't exactly have another choice, do I? Let's depart, Shati."
"Ah, Captain, just assume I'm dead for a while. Even if I was born an Orc beneath the star of genius intellect, I've burned up too much mana and then even had to run with my body, and now the muscles this has built are choking my breath all the more… huff, huff…."
"Stop talking, just breathe, breathe."
"Huff, huff, ugh, I'm dying here."
Scott collapsed onto the boat and fell asleep as if fainting.
'Such a bizarre company, yet I feel safer with them than with my own kin. I must be mad as well.'
With a bitter smile, Shati cast her spell, and set the boat in motion.
***
Perhaps exhausted from the battle with the Sea Serpent Nagas, Azadin too collapsed on the boat and fell into a deathlike sleep. The rocking of the boat did not stir him in the slightest.
How long had he slept?
He awoke to an abdominal pain that felt as though his guts were being torn apart.
"Ugh."
"What troubles you, Master Azadin?"
"My stomach hurts."
"Do you need to relieve yourself? Since we're on a boat, well… Scott is doing it right now."
"Doing what?"
Azadin looked and saw Scott in the sea, apparently relieving himself in the water.
"Hey Captain, look at this. As soon as I do my business, the fish come swarming!"
"…That's not something I particularly want to see."
Azadin turned his head away from Scott, who was relieving himself in the water.
"You slept quite a while. Aren't you hungry? Here, eat this. But your nose is bleeding?"
Shati had broken some dried rations to share with Azadin, and noticed blood running from his nose.
"Mm. That's what woke me up."
Azadin felt the violent surge of power within his body, caused by the collision between his incomplete Beauty of Nature and the white magic drawn from the copy of the Book of the Divine King.
Quickly dispersing the torrent through his body, he sent it flowing into every part, and the pain subsided, leaving him full of strength.
However… this time his muscles, tendons, and bones themselves groaned under his own power.
And then came the thirst for more strength.
Azadin took out the copy of the Book of the Divine King, chose one heavily charged with mana, and absorbed its power.
The pain vanished, and relief came, but the more he did this, the harsher the next seizure would become.
Yet in his current circumstances, he could not abandon the Kazas Haeseo and throw away his power.
"Did we move while I was sleeping? Where are we now?"
[About two hours from Bel Hoda. Another day's journey to reach Bruma.]
The Emperor's Voice answered.
"Already near Bel Hoda? That was fast."
"I controlled the currents, and Jiswa rowed hard."
"My hands feel like they're about to fall off, ha ha. But I think we can manage all the way to Bruma."
"You want to head straight to Bruma along the coast?"
"Yes. No need to take the land route, is there? On the boat we can sleep in shifts."
"True, going by boat is best."
Azadin found Jiswa's reasoning sound.
But then, the Emperor's Voice spoke again.
[Herald Azadin, a petitioner.]
"…Ah."
Someone nearby had used the Emperor's gold coin.
Originally, Azadin was responsible for the area around Salasma, so this place would belong to another Herald.
But because the civil war among the Herald Clan had broken out, the petition had been forced upon Azadin.
[A petition has come from a fishing village near Bel Hoda. This area is normally under another Herald's jurisdiction, but…]
"Is he dead?"
[He refused.]
"Refused? That's possible?"
[The Arael faction, and the elder council, are distorting the contract of service with strange powers. From the beginning, the contract of service you now bear is not the same as the one first made by the Emperor.]
"..."
[This is information I should not reveal, but with fewer and fewer proper Heralds, I must entrust this to you, the Herald of the Second Order.]
"So the contract of service was altered by the tyranny of the elder council? To manipulate the young as they please?"
[I cannot tell you who, or why, or how it was changed. But I can tell you this: it was not the Emperor, but another power that twisted it. In the Emperor's age, there was no curse of service that killed people, forced men and women alike to bear children until death.]
"Mmm. Well, that's something. Worth the promotion, since you tell me things like that. But right now I have to get to Bruma, and maybe save many lives there. Is there any reason to waste time here over a single petitioner's private matter?"
[Will you refuse as well?]
"No. Of course not. I've just slaughtered a horde of Nagas on Dehashuram's island, so I'll manage somehow."
Azadin spoke with optimism, but Shati, listening, was startled.
"That's it? Didn't you just say we had to hurry to Bruma with all our might?"