TERNLF Vol. 3 Chapter 1 Part 2

“—Is this depth sufficient?”

At that moment, I was in a deserted alley well away from the main gate of the Demon King’s Castle, using earth magic to dig a hole in the ground, and I called that question up from the bottom.

“Mm. That should do nicely.”

The one who answered was not Nikka or Grassa, but the young demon girl.

Her name was Faura.

She was the very girl who had vanished beneath the streetlamp.

She was apparently the Demon King’s personal maid, and had gone into the city because the Demon King had asked her to buy something.

And after finally managing to get hold of it after several days, she had found her way back to the castle blocked by the crowd and had been left at a complete loss.

To get that much out of her, we had first had to call out to the spot where she was presumably hiding while erasing even her presence, then work through all sorts of trouble to prove who we were, but I would rather not go into that in too much detail.

It was just that, to anyone looking on, the sight of us talking to empty air must have looked fairly deranged.

The way the people nearby had very obviously edged away from us had hit me harder than I cared to admit.

Still, thanks to that effort, Faura had revealed herself, and now she had agreed to help guide us into the Demon King’s Castle.

“If we dig a horizontal tunnel from here to the castle gardens, we should be able to get inside.”

“You’re sure we won’t trip any alarms?”

“Rest easy. Against my 【Invisible】, the castle’s security net is meaningless.”

The name of the skill she had used to hide herself from us was 【Invisible】.

It was a powerful skill, and if she used it at full strength, it could prevent anyone outside a roughly three-meter radius around her from perceiving the sound, appearance, presence, and even scent of those within it.

If I were to do the same thing, I would need to activate and control several spells at once.

Naturally, the magic power consumption would be immense, and keeping multiple spells under constant control would be no easy feat.

Yet this girl, who looked no older than ten, could wield a power equal to or greater than that with ease.

That was probably why she had been chosen as the Demon King’s personal maid.

“All right, come down one at a time and watch your step.”

I waited at the bottom of the several-meter-deep hole as Grassa, Nikka, and then Faura climbed down in that order.

Once I had confirmed that everyone was inside, I used earth magic to seal the entrance to the hole and restore it to how it had been before.

That should keep anyone from realizing the ground in that alley had been dug up.

“【Blessing Light】.”

The light from outside was cut off, and my voice echoed through the pitch-black space.

“With this, we won’t have to worry about light.”

I had shaped the space lit by the spell into a small chamber large enough for the four of us without it feeling cramped.

“A-Amazing…”

Faura let out a heartfelt cry of admiration.

“See? Toa’s an amazing magic user.”

“No, I’m not exactly a mage.”

If I had to sum up my occupation in a single phrase, would it be an all-rounder?

Though apparently no such occupation actually existed in this world.

“Anyway, we can only get into the Demon King’s Castle like this thanks to you, Faura.”

As I said that, I pressed one hand against the side of the chamber and opened a horizontal tunnel toward the castle with 【Blessing Earth】.

“And when people came into the alley, they passed right by us without noticing us at all, even though we were right there.”

In fact, while I had been digging in the alley, several people had passed close by.

But thanks to Faura’s skill concealing us, not a single one had noticed us.

“With something like that, even if we slip into the castle quietly, there’s no need to worry about the guards catching us.”

“That’s what you’d expect from the Demon King’s personal maid.”

“Indeed. Just so, just so.”

Faura puffed out her chest proudly, all while keeping 【Invisible】 active.

“I wonder if Cheki’ll be surprised if we suddenly show up behind her.”

“You’re not thinking of pulling some weird prank, are you, Grassa?”

“I know, I know.”

With the two of them chatting away so carefree behind me, I continued digging the tunnel.

After digging about ten meters, I began angling the tunnel upward.

“Would around here do?”

Once I had dug until only about ten centimeters remained between us and the surface, I asked Faura for a final confirmation.

“Mm. There should be no problem.”

According to Faura, directly above us should have been the edge of the Demon King’s Castle garden.

I raised my palm toward the ceiling, about to open a hole leading into that garden.

Just then, Grassa’s uneasy voice reached my ears.

“But is it really true the Demon King isn’t dead?”

“Of course it is. I told you, the Demon King… my lord is merely asleep.”

The biggest reason Faura and we had decided to cooperate and sneak into the Demon King’s Castle together was that we had heard the report of the Demon King’s death was false, and that she herself was partly responsible for the misunderstanding.

We only heard that after she revealed who she was.

When she told us she had no idea why things had turned into such a commotion, we explained the situation to her.

Faura had apparently known nothing about the rumors of the Demon King’s death and had been shocked, but she then told us the reason the Demon King was not dead at all.

“Very rarely, the Demon King goes to sleep. And once he enters that sleep, he ceases to respond unless something truly extraordinary occurs. Those fools in the castle must have mistaken that for death.”

Apparently, by “those fools,” she meant demons in positions akin to the so-called Four Heavenly Kings.

“Then once the Demon King wakes up, all this chaos will settle down, right?”

“Indeed. But waking the Demon King is my duty… and aside from me, no one can wake him.”

According to Faura, waking the Demon King required a method known only to her.

She said she absolutely could not tell anyone what that method was because of a pact with the Demon King, and that if it was not used, the only option was to wait naturally for him to awaken on his own.

But even if they waited, not even Faura knew how long the Demon King would sleep, and it was apparently possible he could remain asleep for days.

“It’s already been several days. If the uproar keeps spreading, this could turn into something disastrous.”

The square in front of the royal castle had already become that chaotic from nothing more than rumor. If it went on much longer, the disturbance might swell into something serious enough to shake the Volga Empire itself.

“I don’t really get all the details, but once we get into the Demon King’s Castle, Faura wakes the Demon King up, and everything’s solved. Is that about right?”

“Exactly. Though thinking about how I’ll have to calm those fools down afterward gives me a headache… still, it will work out somehow.”

“Then there’s no time to waste.”

With that, I used earth magic above us to create our exit.

Then, just to be safe, I had Faura conceal the area around the opening with her skill before I alone climbed out first.

Just as calculated, it was a place that seemed to be part of the Demon King’s Castle garden.

And to make matters even better, the garden trees were positioned well enough that there were no soldiers with a direct line of sight to this spot.

I pulled everyone out one by one, then used earth magic to fill in the hole I had opened.

The grass had been stripped bare in the shape of the hole, but there was nothing to be done about that.

“You have my thanks.”

“You helped us too.”

Following me, Nikka answered Faura with a smile and a wave.

“Well then, until we meet again.”

“Indeed. I shall hurry back into the castle now and wake the Demon King. Things may remain noisy for a while, but once everything has settled, I shall come see you myself.”

After leaving those words behind, Faura dashed straight toward the Demon King’s Castle.

“She’s gone.”

“We’re heading to the castle too, so we’ll see her again soon enough. More importantly…”

I turned my gaze toward the direction of the main gate.

“Looks like Cheki really was waiting for us.”

“Oh.”

“You’re right.”

At the end of our gaze, standing in front of a carriage parked a short distance from the main gate, was Cheki, staring toward the gate with a worried expression.

She was probably concerned that the commotion there was keeping us from reaching the castle.

“It’d be wrong to make Cheki wait any longer.”

—

“You all appeared right behind me out of nowhere. You really startled me.”

“Sorry, sorry. But we couldn’t get into the castle from the front, so we didn’t have much choice.”

The room the Empire had prepared for us lay several turns past the entrance hall of the Demon King’s Castle.

As soon as we entered, we took a look around the place, which was incomparably more spacious than any inn room.

It was divided into several smaller chambers, including a reception room furnished with lavish decor, a large and immaculate lavatory, and even a sizable bath that could be filled with hot water at any time by means of a magic tool.

There were also three bedrooms, one of which had a canopy bed.

Perhaps because so many demons were of large build, every piece of furniture in the room was a size larger than those in the Kingdom, and the ceilings had been made higher as well.

According to what Cheki had heard from the demon who guided her here, there were many rooms like this within the castle, and some were even more luxurious.

As far as I was concerned, this room already felt plenty extravagant, but apparently there were levels even above this.

After we had looked through everything, we settled down in the reception room for a breather.

I prepared tea for the four of us with the tea set already in the room, and once everyone had taken a sip, I decided to tell Cheki what had happened after we split up.

I gave her a broad account of how lively the city had been, enough to make us think there was some sort of festival going on, how we had struggled to find an inn at all, how we had met a demon girl named Faura, how we had encountered her again when she had been unable to get into the castle in front of the Demon King’s Castle, and how we had borrowed her help to get inside. Nikka and the others chimed in with details from time to time as I spoke.

I did not mention Faura’s skill, however, since I had not received her permission to disclose it.

“People who come to this city for the first time always get overwhelmed by how crowded it is.”

“Exactly. It seriously shocked me. Everywhere you turned, there were delicious smells drifting from the stalls, and my stomach just wouldn’t stop growling.”

“I felt like I was going to get dizzy from all the people.”

Cheki, Grassa, and Nikka chatted away happily like that.

I still had not heard the full story of what had happened to Cheki after her parents helped her flee the Eldwa Autonomous District, up until the point when she met us in the Kingdom. But apparently, after awakening near the district, she had lived for a while in this imperial capital.

Her ability, the power to discern what lay within a person’s heart, had been extremely useful in determining whether someone meant her harm, and thanks to that, she had apparently never struggled to get by.

“So, Cheki, how did things go with the dwarven delegation?”

Timing my question for the moment the girls’ conversation broke off, I turned to Cheki.

We had heard that our entry into the Demon King’s Castle and our stay here had been approved, but if the Demon King had fallen into slumber, then surely the delegation had not been able to meet with him.

“Well, when we told them we were the delegation from the Dwarf Kingdom, they suddenly took us to a place called the Demon King’s Chamber.”

Apparently, the Demon King’s Chamber was the Demon King’s own room.

What was more, ever since the Demon King’s Castle had been built, he had scarcely ever left it, and all official business and audiences were conducted there.

Even while I was thinking, Could it be the Demon King was some kind of shut-in?, Cheki kept talking.

What she and the others saw upon entering the Demon King’s Chamber was the Demon King himself, seated upon the throne at the very back, utterly motionless.

There, one of the Demon King’s close attendants explained his present condition to them.

“Come to think of it, do you all know what kind of person the Demon King is?”

“I only know the rumors.”

“I don’t know either.”

“I don’t know.”

I knew the story that he was the one who had united the demons, who had been divided by individualism and species-first thinking, and had built a prosperous nation full of diversity.

But I had never heard a firsthand account from anyone who had actually met him.

As far as I remembered, ever since the Kingdom of Preasole and the Volga Empire had begun trade relations, the Demon King had never once appeared in public.

Apparently, he had entrusted all public negotiations to his subordinates, only making the final decisions and issuing orders himself.

“I lived in this country for a while after I woke up too, but I never got to see him even once. So even though it was improper of me, I was actually a little excited that I’d finally get to see the Demon King, but…”

Up to that point, Cheki had been speaking in a cheerful tone, but suddenly her voice dropped.

Then she leaned forward across the table and beckoned all of us closer.

Apparently, she wanted this part to be heard by us alone.

I had already checked to make sure there were no eavesdropping or spying spells or magic tools in the room.

Even so, I could not say with certainty that no one might be listening by some other means.

As I leaned closer to Cheki, I quietly made a suggestion.

“Should I cast a spell so nothing leaks out?”

“Could you?”

“Gladly. 【Silence】.”

After exchanging those words in little more than whispers, I adjusted the spell so it would enclose only the reception room and cast it.

At the same time, the faint sounds from outside vanished completely.

“Thanks, Toa.”

“So what is it that you couldn’t tell us without going this far?”

I straightened back up and returned my voice to normal, then waited for her to speak.

Sensing the slight tension in the air, Nikka and Grassa also stayed silent for several seconds.

Cheki looked straight into my eyes as though she had made up her mind, then said something I had never expected to hear.

“The truth is, my skill isn’t mind reading at all.”

“What do you mean?”

Cheki was supposed to have exposed the demons who had disguised themselves as members of other races by reading their minds.

Hadn’t that been why people recoiled from her as someone who peeked into others’ hearts, even going so far as to call her the devil’s child?

“My real skill is 【Appraisal】.”

“【Appraisal】… You mean…?”

“You can probably tell from the name, but it’s a skill that lets me understand certain information about things or people I want to know about.”

When it came to otherworld fantasy stories, appraisal skills were among the greatest cheat abilities around.

Did that mean she possessed one herself?

“So the reason you were able to find the demons who had infiltrated the Eldwa Autonomous District and the Dwarf Kingdom was…”

“Yeah. I wasn’t reading their hearts at all. I just used 【Appraisal】 to look at their race.”

So Cheki had never actually been peering into people’s hearts, but it seemed she possessed a power that was, in some ways, even more frightening.

“And then I used 【Appraisal】 on the Demon King.”

“That was bold.”

“I knew it was improper to investigate someone who had supposedly died, but…”

Cheki lowered her gaze toward her feet, looking faintly guilty.

“I just couldn’t believe the Demon King was really dead.”

Faura had said that the Demon King was merely asleep.

If Cheki’s skill could determine whether that was true, then that was what this was about.

It was not that I distrusted Faura’s words, but I would have been lying if I claimed not to be curious.

“I thought the thing you didn’t want overheard was about your skill.”

“Yeah. But what I really didn’t want overheard was what I learned about the Demon King.”

With that, Cheki raised her head.

“I’d always meant to tell you about my skill eventually. I just thought it would be after things settled down a little more.”

There, she paused and drew in a deep breath.

“I want you to stay calm when you hear this, but… when I used 【Appraisal】 on the Demon King, I learned that the Demon King wasn’t a living being.”

The words that left her mouth only plunged us into even greater confusion.

“What?”

“What do you mean, not a living being?”

“Do you mean he isn’t a demon?”

The revelation was so unexpected that we all bombarded her with questions at once.

“No. The information I get from 【Appraisal】 is completely different depending on whether the target is a living thing or an inanimate object. If it’s a living thing, I can tell things like its race or type, its age, its rough level of magical power, whether it’s safe to eat, and all sorts of other things…”

If it was an inanimate object, on the other hand, she could generally tell what it was called, what state it was in, and what sort of purpose it was meant to serve.

And Cheki explained, pale-faced, that the result she had gotten for the Demon King had been the latter.

“So that means the Demon King wasn’t originally a living thing at all. And that’s why everyone assumed he had died.”

“Probably… I think so. But there’s no question he was alive and moving until now.”

At that point, Grassa cut into our conversation.

“Could it be that he died and changed from a ‘living thing’ into an ‘inanimate object’?”

That was true enough.

There might have been all kinds of problems with putting it this way, but a dead body was no longer alive, so in that sense, it could be considered an inanimate object.

If so, then wouldn’t it make sense that appraising the already dead Demon King would return a result indicating he was not a living being?

But that would contradict Faura’s claim that he was merely asleep.

“No. I’ve used 【Appraisal】 many times before, and I’ve appraised corpses several times too.”

In those cases, she said, the results had properly flowed into her mind as information on living beings.

But in the Demon King’s case, only information belonging to a completely nonliving “object” had come through.

“Then can you tell us the result you got when you appraised the Demon King?”

The Demon King.

If we wanted to uncover the truth of that existence, then we needed to know the information Cheki had seen.

“That’s the thing. A whole stream of unknown characters I couldn’t understand kept pouring into my head. I can’t explain it very well… This has never happened to me before.”

“Unknown characters?”

“Yeah. I think they were probably some race’s writing that I just don’t know, but I couldn’t read them… I think they looked something like this.”

As Cheki tried to recall the memory, she tore off a sheet from the letter set lying beside the table and began writing something like characters on it with a pen.

“I could only remember the simplest part…”

I stared intently at the characters she wrote, made up of short lines and curves.

“This can’t be…”

At that very instant, a small pain suddenly bloomed in the back of my head, and I let out an involuntary groan as I clutched it.

“Mr. Toa?!”

“What’s wrong, Toa?!”

Nikka and Grassa both called out to me in alarm.

“I’m fine.”

After stopping the two of them with one hand as they moved toward me, I pulled paper and pen from storage and hastily scrawled something down, wanting to confirm what had just resurfaced in my memory.

“Cheki. Wasn’t the string of characters you saw actually this?”

As I asked, I flipped the paper around and set it down facing her the right way.

On the page were the English letters “MPPRD.”

English letters existed in this world too.

I had realized that almost immediately after reincarnating, thanks to things like ranks being labeled A-rank and B-rank.

But the English letters of this world had different forms from those in my previous life.

For example, where “A” in my old world would have been the familiar mountain shape with a single horizontal stroke, in this world it looked more like a cursive “a.”

Even in my previous world, there had been many languages and scripts that resembled one another despite differences of country and race.

So I had simply accepted that in this world too, a similar flow of history must have produced similar letters… but…

“Um… yeah. I’m pretty sure it did look just like that. But why do you know these letters, Toa?”

“Wait. I’m still confused myself right now, and I honestly don’t know how I should explain any of this. So if I can confirm it first, I’ll tell you afterward.”

Answering Cheki as she stared wonderingly at the letters I had written, I rose from my chair.

Then I headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

Grassa’s voice came from behind me.

“To the Demon King. There’s something I need to confirm immediately.”

“Confirm what?”

“Whether what I just remembered is actually true.”

I answered in a rush, my heart already racing, and opened the door.

Then I addressed the soldier standing outside, whether he was there as a guard or to keep watch on us.

“I’d like an audience with the Demon King. What do I need to do?”

“With the Demon King?”

“Yeah. I’d like it handled as quickly as possible, if I can.”

The soldier looked startled by the sudden request, but the answer he gave me was not the one I had hoped for.

“I have been told that the Demon King is currently recuperating from illness and cannot meet with anyone.”

“But that’s… no, sorry. I know I’m asking the impossible.”

Apparently, ordinary soldiers had been told that the Demon King was recuperating from illness.

But word of the Demon King’s death had already leaked beyond the castle walls, so perhaps this soldier knew the truth as well.

Still, given his position, he probably either could not say so or had been ordered not to.

I returned to the room and confirmed that 【Silence】 was still in effect.

“No good after all.”

“Of course it was impossible. In a situation like this, there was no way they’d let you meet the Demon King.”

“Grassa’s right. I was rushing it. But…”

“You really do have a reason you absolutely have to go, don’t you?”

I answered Nikka’s words with a silent nod, then bowed my head toward Cheki.

“Please, Cheki. Could you guide me to where the Demon King was?”

—