Chapter 3: Royal Army

Reading Settings

Translator: Soafp

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When I came to my senses, I was lying on the bed in my own room.

I sat up and did exactly as Kuro had told me.

“Guide.”

When I spoke the word, a book with a black cover and no title written on it appeared in my right hand.

“So it wasn't a dream after all…”

With the book clearly manifesting before me, I understood that what had happened back then was real.

It had been a strange experience.

Normally, a “Heaven-bestowed Skill” is limited to one per person.

There are those who, through training, acquire an “Acquired-Type” skill after coming of age, but I had done no training other than swordsmanship.

Under normal circumstances, this should have been impossible, yet through a deal I had obtained a second skill.

The fact that a deal was required aside, it meant that he was a being capable of granting people “skills.”

“Just who… or what… was he?”

The obvious question crossed my mind, but no amount of thinking produced an answer.

In any case, I had gained a new skill.

Feeling a small thrill at that fact, I opened the book, and inside it—

“This book guides its user toward the ending known as ‘the Demon King's death.'”

That single line was written on the back cover.

All the other pages were blank.

Those pages were strange as well.

I could keep turning them endlessly.

I tried flipping through around three hundred pages, but there was no end in sight.

It was impossible for an ordinary book, and precisely because of that, I strongly recognized that this was a book created by a skill—something fundamentally different from a normal book.

“He said I'd understand how to use it eventually, but…”

It didn't feel like a particularly powerful skill.

For now, all I could confirm was this—

A skill that simply summons a book with infinite blank pages, bearing only the words “This book guides its user toward the ending known as ‘the Demon King's death'” on its back cover.

Just as that white-clad man had said, had I really been deceived after all?

But…

“Even so, what I have to do doesn't change.”

Gripping the sword left to me by my father, I set out on a journey to defeat the Demon King.

After several days of travel, I reached my destination.

I applied to join the Kingdom Army, the most prominent organization fighting against the Demon King's forces.

Looking at the outcome, this choice turned out to be a detour, but it was useful for understanding the kingdom's current situation and the true nature of the “Demon King's Army.”

On the night my enlistment in the Kingdom Army was decided, there was a change in the “Guide.”

The words

“Applied to the Kingdom Army”

were added.

At the time, I didn't question it, but the added text was written in black ink.

“…Is this something like a diary?”

It didn't quite click.

Did this book automatically record my actions?

Wondering if there was anything else, I summoned it again and again, but for the next five years, no new text was added.

The Kingdom Army seemed to be perpetually understaffed, and when I told them my skill was “Swordmaster,” they welcomed me with open arms.

I was assigned to a small unit and participated in several small-scale defensive battles, protecting villages and towns attacked by the Demon King's forces.

The Demon King's Army often attacked villages and towns sporadically, making for fairly busy days.

Through that, I gradually learned about their characteristics.

The Demon King's Army is a mixed force composed of “demons,” including the Demon King himself, as well as monsters and magical beasts.

The upper-tier demons—so-called “Majin”—including the Demon King and his lieutenants, are few in number, while the vast majority of the army consists of lower-tier demons, magical beasts, and monsters.

I experienced combat several times, but enemy units were almost always led by lower-tier demons, and I never once encountered a Majin.

Among my comrades and superiors, hardly anyone had encountered one either.

The only superior officer who had ever faced one would constantly warn us:

“Encountering them means death. If you see one, run.”

I would later come to understand the truth of those words with my own body.

As an organization, the Demon King's Army is fundamentally different from human armies, including the Kingdom Army.

To put it simply, the Demon King's Army is like a “pack of wild beasts.”

Wolves form packs.

But those packs don't then cooperate with other packs, gathering multiple small groups into a larger one to coordinate against a natural enemy.

In other words, a single pack of several wolves with one leader is the maximum unit.

The Demon King's Army operates in much the same way.

Leaving the Majin aside, monsters and magical beasts lack the intelligence to understand the concept of an “army” as a collection of finely organized units.

They obey the Demon King and are placed under lower-tier demons, but there is almost no coordination between different units.

Their sense of comradeship is weak—or nonexistent.

In fact, when territorial instincts are strong, monsters will even fight among themselves.

Outside of their own group, they are nothing more than beings who obey the Demon King, and nothing else.

Humans, on the other hand, gather to form villages and towns, then bring those together to form nations, integrating individual groups into ever larger ones.

They can flexibly redefine the meaning of “comrades” and “groups” according to purpose.

I learned that this was why humanity was still able to fight the Demon King's Army at all.

In short, despite being individually weaker, humanity can maintain the front lines thanks to “organizational strength.”

The Majin are powerful and intelligent, but their numbers are small.

As a result, the main fighting force of the Demon King's Army consists of lower-tier demons, magical beasts, and monsters.

No matter how many they gather, the tactics they can employ in group combat are limited.

Their basic strategy inevitably becomes brute force.

The Kingdom Army, by contrast, devises formations and strategies to counter that.

That is how the current stalemate between the Demon King's Army and the Kingdom Army is maintained.

However.

Even with that organizational strength, there are places that cannot be conquered—the strongholds ruled directly by the Demon King.

Key locations are “dungeonized,” transformed into labyrinths by the Demon King.

Structurally, even if an army attempts to seize them, it cannot commit its full force at once.

As a result, it is difficult to leverage their greatest advantage: organizational strength.

Even if they split into units to advance, monsters stationed on each floor and various traps seal them off, leading to defeat in detail.

And if a small unit encounters a Majin—who possesses the pinnacle of individual combat power—within the narrow passages of a labyrinth, and no one has a skill capable of opposing it, there is no chance of victory.

In fact, while I was serving in the Kingdom Army, several units were dispatched to the Demon King's Castle and other strongholds, and every single one of them was wiped out without accomplishing anything.

The Demon King's Castle in particular is a natural fortress, surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs.

There is only a single road leading to the castle—an extremely inconvenient design if one were choosing a residence, but from the attacker's perspective, it offers not even a hint of how to approach it.

It is truly impregnable.

The road to the castle is narrow and long.

One misstep means plunging into the abyss.

As a result, it is impossible to deploy an army and launch an assault.

Because of these factors, the battle situation is deadlocked.

No—since the Kingdom Army is forced into a defensive war against brute-force attacks, their position is actually worsening.

And yet, amid all this, there were those who succeeded in capturing Demon King Army strongholds, even if only small ones.

Adventurers.

Through the Adventurers' Guild, they are hired for money by nations and civilians alike.

They make their living exterminating monsters that, while not warranting the dispatch of an army, would cause damage to human settlements if left alone.

And among adventurers, there were elite groups composed of those with powerful skills who even managed to conquer small, dungeonized Demon King Army strongholds.

Parties that succeeded in capturing strongholds were called “S-class,” and they earned respect from the people that rivaled—or exceeded—that of the Kingdom Army.

Some missions involved escorting them to the labyrinths.

Our role was to clear the way so that their strength could be devoted entirely to dungeon conquest.

“Erius, you've got the ‘Swordmaster' skill, right? Why don't you quit the Kingdom Army and join my party?”

On the way to a labyrinth, the one who invited me like that was Ignis, leader of the S-class adventurer party “Fall of the Great Tree.”

The name came from the great tree that once gave humanity hope, before being mercilessly broken by the Demon King.

They likely meant to carry on its will.

I shook my head at his offer.

“No. I have something I need to do.”

“And what would that be?”

“Defeating the Demon King, of course.”

“Hah. You serious?”

“Completely.”

At first, Ignis listened with a grin, but perhaps he saw my expression and turned serious.

“I see. Anyone with that kind of resolve is welcome. If you ever change your mind, come find me.”

He patted my shoulder and walked away.

After that, we completed the mission without further conversation.

At the labyrinth we escorted them to, his party went missing.

Adventurers, and the Kingdom Army.

From my perspective, it was simply a division of roles, but among the Kingdom Army's upper ranks, there were those who found the adventurers' existence irritating.

After all, they had succeeded in capturing several strongholds the Kingdom Army had failed to take.

In other words, it was a matter of pride.

Utterly trivial, but unavoidable.

Where there are many people, there will always be those like that.

Even so, the strongholds adventurers managed to capture were only small ones, and the large, strategically important Demon King Army bases remained unconquered.

Naturally, the Kingdom Army wanted to break this situation as well.

And five years after setting out on my journey—

The year when, if Kuro's words were to be believed, the Demon King should be defeated.

By then, my accomplishments had earned me command of a small unit, and I spoke with my subordinates.

“I want to attack the Demon King's Castle.”

At first, they were confused.

But when I passionately explained that if we did nothing, the situation would only worsen, and that we couldn't leave it to adventurers or the upper command forever, every one of them agreed.

We then volunteered to the higher-ups, and our request was approved.

The “Swordmaster” skill is a powerful one, rarely seen even among S-class adventurer parties.

They must have decided to bet on that.

While leading ten subordinates along the road to the Demon King's Castle, I finally encountered one.

A Majin.

There was only one of them.

No—could it even be described as one?

It possessed a massive body more than twice our size, and at a single glance I understood that this was impossible.

The battle ended almost instantly.

With a powerful preemptive strike, my subordinates were slaughtered without being able to do anything.

I somehow avoided that initial blow, but the next attack the Majin unleashed—despite being terrifyingly fast—somehow looked slow to me.

As I felt death steadily approaching, I thought—

Just as that “Shiro” had said, I had been deceived after all.

As the result of some incomprehensible deal, I had been given a meaningless book.

A book that bore the suggestive words “This book guides its user toward the ending known as ‘the Demon King's death,'” and only a single added line: “Applied to the Kingdom Army.”

In other words, he had been toying with me.

I hadn't even reached the Demon King, let alone killed him.

That was the only conclusion I could reach.

(What a joke… guiding someone to the Demon King's death…)

Cursing inwardly, until the very moment of my death, I continued to wish for the Demon King's demise—

And then—

The next instant, I awoke in my childhood home, in my own room.