TERNLF Vol. 3 Prologue

◆Prologue◆

One day, I, Toa Yamazaki, was reincarnated into another world as Toa Kashit, the second son of a noble house in a country called the Kingdom of Preasole.

I had thought that being born the son of a noble would let me live a carefree life, but because I was a failure, I was sent at the age of eight to a certain frontier fortress under the pretense of training. Thrown into that dangerous environment, where magic beasts constantly poured in from the neighboring forest, I spent my days desperately struggling to survive while being tempered by hardened veterans.

Then, ten years later, when I turned eighteen, I was summoned back to the royal capital after my father’s death, only for my elder brother Glaas, who had succeeded as head of the family, to cast me out.

After abandoning my status as a noble and becoming an adventurer, I met two girls named Nikka and Grassa, who had likewise only just become adventurers, and though we kept getting swept up in trouble, we eventually began traveling together.

After leaving the royal capital, our journey had continued smoothly, but in one town we got caught up in an incident and ended up pursuing an adventurer named Cheki, who had been kidnapped.

While tracking Cheki’s whereabouts, we met a Beastkin named Vezzo, and with his help we infiltrated the Dwarf Kingdom.

There, we learned that Cheki was half dwarf and half elf, and that the true identity of Luchimada, one of the candidates for the next king, was a demon who had slipped into the Dwarf Kingdom in order to bring about its collapse.

After a fierce battle, we defeated Luchimada, and peace returned to the Dwarf Kingdom.

After that, in order to report the full details of the incident to the Volga Empire, the nation of the demons, and to hold talks between the dwarves, the demons, and the elves, it was decided that Cheki, who carried both dwarven and elven blood, would head to the Empire together with the delegation as a plenipotentiary ambassador.

However, just as we had decided to accompany her and were about to leave the Dwarf Kingdom together, news came rushing in that the Demon King, ruler of the demons, had died.

And so, in order to confirm whether that report was true, we set out for the Volga Empire.

—

Along the way, after passing through several towns, we finally arrived at Kazaria, the imperial capital of the Volga Empire.

Kazaria’s main thoroughfare was even more crowded and lively than the royal capital of Preasole.

As we searched for an inn, the three of us wandered through it wide-eyed like country bumpkins, glancing around at everything.

The Volga Empire was a nation ruled by demons.

Unlike humans, beastkin, dwarves, or elves, the people called demons were not a race with any strict definition.

That was because those who were called demons were far too diverse to be described as a single race.

The same could be said of beastkin when it came to diversity, but true to their name, they all bore beastly traits in their bodies, with many shared features such as ears and tails.

Demons, however, were different.

Even when grouped together under the single label of demons, their skin tones, appearances, and abilities varied wildly.

Some looked close to human, while others hardly seemed like living creatures at all.

Their sizes also differed, with some species measuring only a few centimeters, while others possessed gigantic bodies exceeding ten meters.

There were even said to be demons who were literally invisible.

The only thing they all had in common was that they were races born and raised in the northern lands, where magic power ran strong.

“So I’d heard, but seeing it in person, it really is surprising how many different kinds of demons there are.”

“It really is.”

“But still, there are fewer people of other races here than I expected.”

“I thought this was supposed to be a country that accepted any race.”

That much was true. In this country, we hardly saw many people of other races like ourselves.

And even when we did, they were mostly adventurers or merchants.

I had heard that before the Demon King unified the demons, established the Empire, and began promoting exchanges with other races, powerful demons had been objects of fear.

The reason there were so few travelers was probably because that prejudice had still not been fully erased.

“Even so, the fact that only we weren’t allowed into the castle… that really doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Well, we’re just ordinary people, not official representatives of any country, so it can’t be helped.”

That was right. Only Cheki and the delegation from the Dwarf Kingdom had been allowed through the gates, while we had been refused entry at the entrance to the Demon King’s Castle.

“Cheki and the dwarves did say they’d try to persuade them to let us in, so we should wait.”

If we could just get inside the castle, there would be no need to look for an inn.

But as things stood, the confusion inside the Demon King’s Castle apparently still had not settled, and there was a real possibility that we would be unable to enter for days.

Meanwhile, news of the Demon King’s death was still being kept from the public.

Thanks to that, the unrest had not spread through the imperial capital, but once it was announced, we would no longer be able to leisurely search for lodging like this.

“For now, we’d better find an inn while we still can.”

With that, I set off through the city with the two girls in search of a place to stay.

◆　◇　◆　◇　◆

In a remote corner of the northern part of the continent, in a land known as the Northern Lands, a girl was born in a small demon village.

Her name was Faura.

Her people were by no means a powerful race of demons.

But they possessed a special skill unlike anything other races had.

That skill was called 【Invisible】.

It was a skill that allowed them to completely erase their appearance and presence.

On their own, each individual could affect only themselves and a very small area around them.

But when several of them gathered together, that power multiplied many times over.

Using that skill, they concealed their entire village and protected themselves from outside threats.

Because of that ability, other demons called them Invisitors, and at the same time, demons who believed that strength was everything often sneeringly referred to them as “Cowards.”

In the Northern Lands, where powerful monsters ran rampant, might was justice.

Everyone believed that fighting, winning, and surviving was all that mattered.

That was why the Invisitors, who lived by fleeing instead of fighting, were always despised and mocked.

Yet it was also true that their cowardice was precisely what had allowed such a weak race to survive.

The Invisitors lived on quietly, but they did indeed continue living in the harsh Northern Lands.

They were, by nature, a long-lived people.

So long as they were not killed by monsters, some could live as long as five hundred years.

But long-lived races all shared one trait: they had poor reproductive ability.

To the Invisitors, Faura was the first child to be born in more than a hundred years.

The village where she had been born had been built in secret at the foot of a mountain that towered over the Northern Lands, a mountain known as Death Mountain.

The village was constantly hidden by the Invisitors’ 【Invisible】, making it nearly impossible for anyone other than fellow Invisitors to even know it existed.

There, Faura was lovingly raised as the village’s only child.

Though poor, she had spent happy days showered with affection by the villagers, but those days came to an end one day.

The village was swept up in a sudden stampede.

A stampede was a natural phenomenon that occurred in lands with a high concentration of magic power, when monsters erupted in great numbers for some unknown reason.

It was generally said not to happen in places where magical power was thin, but even so, there were exceptions such as dungeons, where magical density could rise and trigger one.

Because abnormal surges of monsters inside dungeons could usually be detected in advance through regular investigations, most were put down by nations or the Adventurers’ Guild before they turned into large-scale disasters.

But in the Northern Lands, no such organizations existed at all.

That was why, once a stampede occurred, the damage was immense.

The terror of a stampede lay in the fact that dozens or even hundreds of monsters moved at once, trampling everything in their path.

Furthermore, even if an Invisitor village was hidden by 【Invisible】, it was not as though it had truly vanished.

In other words, if a village lay in the path of a stampede, everything in it would be crushed whether it could be seen or not.

The Invisitors, who had lived there for ages, had mistakenly believed that place would remain safe forever.

That was why they failed to notice anything until the stampede had already drawn near.

Had they not been demons, news of the stampede would surely have been passed along to those living in its path, and evacuation orders would have been given.

But demons had little sense of fellowship even with their own kind, and as for interacting with settlements of other races, that almost never happened at all.

They had lived by the belief that so long as they and their companions were safe, nothing else mattered.

That was the mindset of those who had survived in the barren Northern Lands by relying on nothing but their own strength.

The stampede crushed the invisible village, crushed the Invisitors, and then barreled straight into Death Mountain.

Only after smashing away a great section of the mountainside did the maddened monsters finally exhaust themselves, and the stampede came to an end.

Once they came back to their senses, the monsters devoured the carrion of the others that had died in the collision, then scattered and departed in all directions.

What remained was the village, reduced to a pitiful ruin.

The bodies of the Invisitors had all ended up in the bellies of monsters, leaving behind nothing but traces of blood.

“Papa… Mama…”

No.

From within the collapsed wreckage, a small, anxious voice rose up.

Rattle.

Part of the village’s remains shifted and collapsed.

“Mm.”

That voice belonged to the girl, the only child in the village, Faura.

Beneath the rubble was a small hole, barely large enough for a child to crawl into.

From there, Faura cautiously poked her head out.

It was not that she had survived by pure chance because she happened to be inside that hole. Realizing there was no escape from the stampede, her parents had hidden her there at the last moment, in an emergency shelter they had prepared in case the village was ever attacked, hoping that at least their daughter might survive.

After crawling out of the hole, Faura stood frozen for a while, stunned by the horrific state of the village.

But only for a little while.

Soon, she began walking through the ruins, searching for her parents.

Yet though there were traces of blood, there was not a single villager to be found, not even a corpse.

Not knowing they had all been swallowed into monsters’ bellies, Faura went on searching for her parents and the other villagers for nearly two days.

At last, she reached the place where the stampede had ended.

The foot of Death Mountain.

Its mountainside had been gouged out so violently that it looked as though some monstrous force had torn into it.

Foul-smelling monster fluids had been splashed everywhere, and the scene looked like hell itself.

It was easy to imagine just how many monsters had slammed into that mountainside with such terrifying force.

And yet, even in such a place, the monsters’ corpses had already been completely devoured, with not even bones left behind.

Only then did Faura finally realize that the other villagers, and her parents as well, had died just the same and been eaten by monsters.

“Papa… Mama… everyone…”

For the first time, tears fell from Faura’s eyes to the ground.

One after another.

Her sobs did not stop, nor did the tears pouring down her face. By the time her throat had grown raw and it felt as though every last drop of moisture had been drained from her body, she picked up a sharp-pointed stone lying nearby, meaning to end her own life.

If she cut her throat with this, she would die.

Thinking that, she tried again and again to stab her own neck, only to hesitate each time, leaving several wounds across her throat.

“Next time…”

At this rate, she would never be able to die.

So she steeled herself for the next attempt.

And just as she shut her eyes and moved to drive the stone into her own neck with all her strength, it happened.

Rrrrmmmble.

Right in front of her, the mountainside that had been shaved away by the stampede suddenly gave way in a massive collapse.

Startled, she dropped the stone from her hand and turned her eyes toward the cloud of dust kicked up by the cave-in.

Then, as the dust gradually began to settle—

“What… is that?”

Something was jutting out from the collapsed rock face.

No, not something.

It was an arm.

“A giant… person?”

That arm was so enormous it looked as though it could easily close around and crush tiny Faura, and from a palm broad enough to seat her comfortably extended three fingers.

How large must the rest of the body still buried beneath the earth be?

The thought alone made Faura tremble.

Normally, if she wanted to survive, she should have fled at once.

Her instincts told her as much.

But right now, she had already resolved to die.

She was afraid to kill herself, but…

“That’s right. I’ll have that person kill me.”

On trembling legs, Faura stepped forward, one step at a time, toward the gigantic hand.

But the outstretched hand showed no sign of moving.

“Could it already be dead?”

Ordinarily, no one buried in the side of a mountain could possibly still be alive.

But this was the Northern Lands, where demons lived.

Faura had heard that among demons were races that slept underground for long periods of time.

Even as she approached, the arm showed no sign of movement whatsoever.

Slowly, she reached out and touched one of its fingers.

“It’s cold.”

The arm was covered in a hard outer shell and felt as cold as stone beneath her hand.

Could this perhaps be one of those creatures she had heard about in stories, a golem?

She had heard that golems were monsters born when magic power took root in stone, earth, or minerals and turned them into living creatures.

If that was the case, then emerging from inside a mountain was not so strange.

Thinking that, Faura murmured to herself.

“But it doesn’t move, so I guess it really is dead.”

A golem that had been born inside the earth and died without ever being able to move.

The image that came to mind was a sorrowful one.

“Was it in pain? Was it sad? I’m very sad right now too.”

She did not know whether a monster like a golem could even possess such feelings.

But seeing her own plight reflected in that motionless figure, Faura clung to one of its great fingers and began to shed tears again, tears that should already have run dry.

And it was at the moment those tears fell onto the tip of its finger.

As though responding to them, a deep sound rumbled up from the bowels of the earth.

Gwoooooon.

The vibration ran through the fingertip she clung to, so strong that it shook her whole body.

“Did it come back to life?”

Slowly, without paying the slightest heed to the fact that Faura was still hanging onto it, the three great fingers that had not moved at all until now began to close.

Startled, she let go and jumped down to the ground. Then, in order to avoid the rubble falling from above, she retreated from the mountainside and watched from a distance.

“It’s huge…”

As the mountainside crumbled away, the arm stretched out farther, sending debris flying.

Then came two long arms.

The three fingers on each hand opened and closed several times, as if trying to grasp something.

Next, its buried body emerged, breaking apart the rock as it revealed its colossal form.

Its rounded torso was every bit as massive and imposing as Faura had imagined, and it had no head.

Ah, but there’s something round near the top that looks like an eye… Maybe its head and body are fused together?

Extending downward from that torso, which also seemed to serve as its head, were four legs.

They were about as thick as its arms, though less than half as long.

The despair that had filled Faura’s eyes only moments ago had now faded.

In its place was the simple curiosity of a child.

At last, gathering her courage, Faura called out to the giant monster in a loud voice.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Faura.”

Her parents had taught her that when greeting someone for the first time, she should introduce herself first.

She had no idea whether the monster before her could understand words, but she did as she had been taught, and then…

It answered.

“Fau… ra.”

Since losing the village, this was the first time she had met someone with whom words could be exchanged, and her cheeks flushed with excitement.

Reassured by the complete absence of hostility from the other side, she eagerly stretched out one hand and spoke again.

“That’s right. Faura. Will you tell me your name too?”

The monster did not answer at once.

But instead, it slowly extended its giant arm toward her and gently touched the fingertips to the hand she had reached out.

And then it answered.

“――――――”

“Yes, that’s an unusual name. But I like it.”

That was how the girl met the one who would later unite the demons and be called their savior, the Demon King.

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