Chapter 2 – The Issue at Hand＊
There were few things an infant could do.
They received food from their mother, slept according to instinct, and did their business.
It was just these three at most.
However, Luru had what infants normally didn’t; a strong ability to think.
Because of that, he was able to consider thing, and arrange the information he heard from perking his ears up.
From the time when he clearly recognised that he held his memories as the demon king, each day he would listen up for the conversations that went on in his home, and a number of facts became clear to him.
What he learned about in most detail, was of course, information about his own family.
According to the conversations that his mother and the servants had, it seems that their family name was Cadisnola.
In other words, Luru’s real name was Luru Cadisnola.
It seemed that his mother’s name was Medea Cadisnola, and his father’s name was Patrick Cadisnola.
They had probably said their names right after Luru was born, or perhaps around the time things had calmed down but unfortunately, Luru had no memories of the time between his birth, and the moment he recognised himself as the demon king, so it was only recently that he was finally able to hear this from a conversation between his mother and a servant.
Of course, just knowing the names of his parents and his family name wasn’t enough to satisfy Luru’s thirst for knowledge.
At present, Luru wanted to know a great number of things.
That’s why he actually wanted to hear about more things in greater detail.
To that end, he had considered asking his mother or the servants directly, but right now he still hadn’t reached the age where he could talk yet, and it would probably have been odd for him to suddenly start talking.
That’s why for now, when he was hungry, or wanted to defecate, he would just cry and scream without using real words.
Even so, his mother and the servants would still speak to him, so he didn’t feel that uncomfortable, and there wasn’t any information he needed urgently so there was no problem but…
It was just that life as an infant, was to Luru, nothing more than idleness.
Eating and sleeping.
Once he compared days of doing nothing but that to his memories of being busy with office work or fighting as a demon king, it was such a helplessly idle lifestyle that even right this second, it felt like his mind would grow slow from it.
That’s why after Luru gained self-awareness and gathered information for a few days, he started to wonder if there was anything he could do to kill time.
And to that end, he felt that he had to think about what he’d do from now on.
Luru had been born again as a human because of a strange incident.
Though he didn’t know what kind of life he’d lead from now on, finishing his life without doing anything was much too boring.
That’s why he wanted some kind of objective.
Moreover, there was also the fact that he felt that if he didn’t have a goal, then in the end, he would die without having accomplished anything, just like his previous life.
And he would hate that.
He’d pass on being an idiot who wouldn’t change even after dying.
In the past, Luru was the demon king.
Right now, he was a human.
Being the case, just what would he do from now on? Just how would he live from now on?
It was a profound question, and yet another issue.
It was for this reason that he spent a number of days seriously contemplating it.
For just how many days had he been ruminating over this?
Because of the complicated way in which the body of an infant perceived time, he couldn’t say for sure, but during that time, Luru had reached an answer for now.
That is, he would live as he wanted. It was a very simple conclusion, and was an answer that held in a sense a great deal of freedom.
Could that be called an objective?
Wasn’t it just living randomly?
There were probably people who lived as such.
However, if you thought about it carefully, you could probably understand that this was definitely not the case.
In his previous life, Luru was the demon king.
Because he was blessed with a mighty mana and physical strength from when he was a young child, he had been burdened with expectations, and had most of his life planned out for him since he was small.
Naturally, Luru remembered that it would have been unacceptable for him to have lived freely as he wished.
And he had memories of being a little rigid, and feeling that he had to answer these expectations.
Because he was stronger than any other demon, he also had the responsibility to lead their race.
Because of that, he wasn’t particularly dissatisfied with his position as the demon king.
However, it was the truth that because he was in a position of responsibility, there were choices that he couldn’t take.
Holding the hand of humanity, and cooperating was one of those impossible choices.
That’s why Luru painted over his heart, and fought as the incarnation of revenge and war.
After all, the Luru in those days was allowed nothing but that.
He could do nothing but that.
However, it was different now.
Right now, Luru was the human child of a lower class noble family, and on top of that, he could feel from his parents words that they weren’t wishing for him to succeed their office in the slightest.
In other words, they wouldn’t mind if he lived as he wished.
In that case, I want to live a unbound lifestyle that I couldn’t in my previous life, he suddenly thought.
And once he had come across that idea, he felt that it was and extremely interesting and wonderful one.
Certainly as an objective, it was much too vague.
So he feel that.
But even so…
He would live as he wished.
What an interesting ring that has to it, he thought.
And then, not leaving that thought as merely a thought, he began seriously considering it.
To freely live as he wished in this world.
He would absolutely, definitely, do so, he thought.
And for the sake of that, what he would probably need to do so, was power, he thought.
That the world wasn’t so gentle a place that the absolutely powerless could live in was something that he knew much too well from his previous life.
Those who had no power at all would just be wounded, trampled on, and then killed.
The demon race held mighty power.
However, even that powerful demon race had been overrun not seldomly by the human race that used the violence of numbers.
Even the demon king himself had been destroyed by the group of four heroes.
All of it was because they lacked enough power.
That’s why things happened the way they did.
That’s why this time, he didn’t want to end up weeping because of his lack of power.
No matter what, he wanted to gain enough power that he could stop raining embers[(figuratively)].
However, right now, Luru had the body of an infant.
He couldn’t just simply start working out[training his body].
Even if he could, it would be after his body grew up a little more.
When he began to wonder how he would do so then, what came to mind first was the thought of his mastery over mana and magic.
Mana, magic, magecraft.
Those who manipulated these were known in his previous life as casters, magicians, and magi.
As for the distinctions between then, a caster was one who could personally invoke magic; a magician was one who was a certain amount more educated in magic theory, and could utilise magecraft in battle; and a magi was one who surpassed magicians, and was a magic specialist.
In the past, Luru was the world’s strongest demon, and also the world’s strongest magus.
The magic he fired off himself was matchless, and his understanding of magical phenomena was so deep that nobody else could reach him.
The archmagus in the hero’s party was also a powerful spellcaster, and was a magician with deep knowledge as well, and was an existence like the demon king in this regard, but there was quite the difference in ability.
Compared to the demon king who possessed enough power to match the four heroes by himself, the archmagus’ limit was one high class demon.
As for the hero, she could exchange rallies with the demon king on equal fotting for a certain amount of time, but even so, a few minutes or a few dozen minutes was her limit.
Even for the hero, had she been unable to land a decisive blow on the demon king, she wouldn’t have been able to win.
The reason was that the mana the demon king held was much too powerful.
Though his base strength was already considerable, his seemingly endless amount of mana could be used in body reinforcement magecraft without end.
The level that the hero had finally reached only after shaving down her soul, acquiring the divine protection of god and spirits and making use of a large number of magic tools, was a level that the demon king could reach by his pure ability alone.
Could he reach such a level this time as well?
While wondering about this, Luru aimed for a moment when his mother and the servants weren’t in the room, and began to analyse the mana that dwelt within him.
This time, Luru had been born as a human.
In other words, this body was that of a human, and the mana that he was born with had a limit.
The demon race was powerful because from the moment they were born, they already possessed a pool of mana whose size had no match in the other species, and because Luru was presently a human, he shouldn’t have been able to expect that much from himself.
However.
When Luru began moving the mana in his body, he noticed it.
That his mana pool was unnaturally massive.
It was in a sense extremely natural, but for a human this was clearly strange.
In other words, inside Luru who should have been a human, dwelt the same mana that he possessed as the demon king.
Luru noticed inside his body a seemingly limitless fountain of mana.
Even if he pumped it out, and pumped it out, it didn’t seem to run out at all.
This was an extremely convenient situation for Luru, but at the same time it meant that he couldn’t just readily fire magic out like he did in the past.
He held enough mana that if he carelessly fired magic and failed to control it, it was liable to easily turn the whole place into charred earth.
And he noticed some other problems as well.
Certainly he was used to this amount of mana.
It was the same amount of mana as he had as a demon king.
Because of that, he thought that using magic would feel the same.
However, the feeling of the mana coursing through his body was a great difference to how it felt when he was the demon king.
It was extremely difficult to flow mana through his body.
Having understood that a fountain of mana was pulsing in the depths of his body, he decided to flow it through his body to use body reinforcement, but it felt as though he were trying to cram more contents into an already full container.
It was probably a greater amount of mana than this body could contain, he thought.
Should it be called the difference between the bodies of the demon race and the human race?
However, even amongst humans, there were those who held massive amounts of mana like the hero, and it was probably not impossible that his body could achieve the same thing.
Was it because the way he was supposed to do things was different, or was it because this body was immature?
It would be an important point of research from now on.
From now on he would be following this assumption, and would need to exert some effort, he thought.
His body being filled to the brim with mana meant that body reinforcement using mana was impossible, but then what about emission types?
It wasn’t impossible to emit mana out, even without running a large quantity of mana through your body.
You could feel the source of your mana in the depths of your abdomen, and to draw it out from there you would need to make your mana flow a little, but if it was just that much, he felt he could do it with his current body.
However, a large problem was that testing it would be difficult.
If he made a mistake in his choice of magic, it was possible that it could give rise to great harm.
Though he was called the incarnation of evil in his past life, Luru was by no means a murderer for fun.
On top of that, there was no way that he would want to annihilate the mother that had given birth to him, nor the servants that had taken care of him.
That’s why he had no choice other than to test out his magic, little by little, starting with small scale magic.
After he grew up a little, and his range of activity widened[the range in which he is about to move about], he wanted to test out the large scale magic from his time as the demon king, but for now he had no choice but to give up on it.
Concluding as such, for now Luru decided to test out emitting mana from his body.
As for the method and technique needed to do this, he had thoroughly exerted himself to master these back when he was a demon king, and could do so correctly even without anyone teaching him.
He thoroughly knew the little tricks, the right feeling when doing so, and the principles behind it, and on top of that, mana in and of itself was the same whether you were of the demon race or the human race.
That’s why if he started practising from this age, it should’ve been possible to use magic reasonably efficiently.
When he decided to try emitting mana as a test, he quietly closed his eyes, and slowly began to draw out mana from his abdomen.
And then he brought it out, brought it outside of him.
What he found was that there didn’t seem to be any problem.
Certainly it was difficult to run mana through his body, but even so, it wasn’t as though he couldn’t do it at all.
He didn’t know if it would become more easy to do so in the future, but that was what you’d call ‘something to research’.
At any rate, it seemed that he’d be able to make do somehow.
Feeling relief at knowing his, Luru continued to practice.
/Chapter 2 END
Chapter 3 – The Village and the Visitor＊
Seven years had passed by since the time Luru’s memories as the demon king returned and he began his life as a baby.
He had passed over the days when he couldn’t move, and since he had been able to move about on his own feet, you could say that Luru’s life had undergone a dramatic change.
At any rate, as an infant, the only things he could look at were his parents, the servants, and excepting his parents acquaintances who would occasionally come by, there was nothing besides that except for the ceiling and bed.
Even if they took him out somewhere, it seems that they thought that having him out for too long was bad for his body, so would immediately bring him back into his room, and so there wasn’t much time for him to observe anything else.
Compare to that lifestyle, just how were things now?
He was able to move as he fancied and pleased, and able to walk about as he pleased, and visit the places that he pleased.
Having overcome the period as a baby when he could do nothing, Luru truly felt that being able to walk was a marvellous thing.
Being able to go outside meant that there were many things he had learned, but first of all, that where Luru was living now was a residence located in a frontier village.
Though Luru’s father was a lower class noble, he was different to common villagers in that he had greater prosperity in his property and lifestyle.
Having said that though, compared to the period in which Luru was the demon king, the difference them and the other villagers was very little, and at best they lived in a slightly bigger mansion, had one more dish per meal. It was only to that degree.
Perhaps we should say that ‘that’s why’, the other villagers thankfully didn’t have a bad relationship with Luru’s family, and though it wasn’t as though they didn’t show any respect at all, the majority of the villagers treated them friendlily so both his mother and father were able to live without many problems.
As for Luru himself, the villagers treated him kindly, and he didn’t feel any particular discomfort with his village life.
If you forced him to say something, then perhaps he felt that it was a little strange having all these humans treat him kindly, but he only felt that way because he compared it to his time as a demon, and because of that, this much was obvious now that he was a human.
At first he hadn’t been used to it, but as the same thing repeated, within a few years it had become a matter of course to him.
Even if his heart was that of a demon, he was able to get along this well and live with other humans.
‘Could I not have made something like this possible when I was the demon king?’ Though it wasn’t as though he didn’t have such feelings of regrets, he told himself that this was already in the past, and he strove not to get too grim about it.
Even if you regretted it, things that had already happened couldn’t be changed.
Though the village was a called a frontier village, a highway passed through it, and if you wanted to reach another village, it wasn’t that difficult as long as you had a carriage.
Because of Luru’s age there was no way he could travel to other villages himself, but he had at least been to the neighbouring town before.
If you compared his village to the town, as expected his village was a little behind in culture, but there weren’t that many differences, and it wasn’t as though his village was extremely poor either.
Like that, after observing various things, and looking into various things, the conclusion that he finally reached was that this village was a relatively good village to live in.
It was peaceful, the people were kind, and the people were prosperous enough not to starve.
It was a tranquil enough village that he even thought that it mightn’t be bad to live out his life here until he died.
However, Luru had no intention of doing as such.
For what purpose had he been training up until now?
It was for the sake of leaving this village and travelling the world. It was for the sake of going on a journey.
Luru had decided to live as he wished, but that included going where he wanted; in other words, going on a journey.
Luru wanted to see the world.
He wanted to see with his own eyes where the world was headed after the end of the long demon-human war.
To that end, for the sake of acquiring the knowledge needed, while he was growing up, he indirectly asked his parents about the world.
Luru was the reborn demon king.
In other words, there should have been not a small amount of time that had passed since the conclusion of the demon-human war.
There was no objection to this matter.
However, the problem was just how long exactly that passed since then.
If it had only been one or two years then he wouldn’t have particularly cared.
If it was only of that scale, then even if the demon race faced persecution, there would have been survivors amongst his fellow demons.
If he travelled the world, he would probably be able to meet his old acquaintances.
However, the scale of time that reincarnation took was not something so little, or so it was once said.
A decade or a century was nothing more than an instant to a travelling soul.
That’s why it wouldn’t have been strange for a considerable amount of time to have passed since Luru was destroyed as the demon king.
To confirm just how long it had been, he asked his parents.
Just when was now? Just how long had it been since the conclusion fo the war with the demon race?
What he found out was that since that day, the day that the demon king had been destroyed, it had already been some thousands of years, and the war between the demon race and human race was almost nothing more than legends and myths but now, so they didn’t know the details.
He had asked about whether the demon race still existed, but the answer was that they didn’t really know.
There was a race called the demon race, but they were a different race from the one in the myths, and the species that the human race had warred with was nowadays referred to as the Ancient Demon Race, and it was said that had already left this world.
If he tried to explain things in line with that fact, then the demon race that had been defeated by the humans had probably been completed exterminated, and disappeared from this world as a species.
However, he believe that, nor did he want to believe that.
No matter how much the humans have overpowered the demons, was it realistic for them to have wiped out every single one?
No, it’s probably impossible, thought Luru.
You couldn’t have said that Luru just wanted to believe so.
But the demon race had a long lifespan, and their life-force was far beyond that of a human’s.
No matter what, it probably would’ve been impossible to have erased every single one of them.
Hearing about this fact, Luru had managed to come up with an objective.
He would search for the demons, that is, the ones now called the ancient demons.
They were surely few in number.
However, it shouldn’t have been the case that not a single one remained.
If he believed in this, and travelled the world, he would find them.
There was still the matter of what he’d do after that, but for now, he wanted to confirm no matter what whether or not his brethren still lived to this day.
It was the responsibility of the one who had once led the demon race.
For that purpose, Luru had trained his ability to manipulate mana all these years, and had reached a fair degree of skill.
Of course if you compared it to his time as the demon king, then it was weak and rough perhaps you should say, but even so it was a large difference from when he had just been born.
At the very least, he could use magic needed for everyday life with no problem, and could use offensive magic to a certain degree.
As for large scale destruction magic, because he still hadn’t found a suitable location to practice it, he hadn’t used it even once since he had been born into this body so whether or not he could use it was an unknown, but he had this feeling that he probably could.
Even though it had been that difficult to circulate mana, he could now do it well enough.
Though it wasn’t to the extent of the heroes who he had battled as the demon king, he had reached a level where he could apply it in combat.
It seemed that if it was just low level monsters, then at the very least he wouldn’t lose.
If he continued at this rate, then the day when he could leave the village probably wasn’t that far.
Strictly speaking, he felt that if he left right now he could make it work somehow, but even if he left, there wasn’t a place where a seven year old could find work.
For now he had the goal of considering what work he would do after leaving the village, but at present he had no support[a backer, maybe a reference], so it would probably be difficult.
In other words, though you couldn’t say that the day when he left the village was far away, he had no choice but to stay in this village for a few years longer.
However, his life in the village wasn’t bad, so that was fine too.
Up until now he had been acting like a normal child, so he had managed to make a few human friends in the village.
Today he had promised to plan with those friends, and right now he was walking to their meeting place because of that.
He had left the house a little late, but it was within the margin of simple miscalculation errors.
After a while he reached the meeting place and saw a group of three boys and girls waving at him.
“Luru! You’re finally here!? You’re late!”
It was a red-haired boy who gave off a lively atmosphere, Rusty.
He was the same age as Luru, and a little while after being born they met each other, and since then they had always played together. In this village, he was Luru’s longest friend, and one of his childhood friends.
His lightly freckled face was twisted in a little displeasure.
It was probably because Luru had come late.
Luru obediently apologised, and tried to appease him.
“Ah, my bad. Once I start reading books I completely forget about the time.”
Luru’s family had a library befitting of a lower class noble family.
Books were expensive and not something you could buy that easily, but even so they were necessary to education, and so his father dedicated a portion of his salary to increasing their book collection.
Luru’s parents had taught him letters, so he could read.
That’s why he had permission to read some of the books in his home.
“Books? What’s fun about that? If you’re a man then you need adventure! Let’s go to the forest! The forest!”
Said Rusty, whose mood had bettered right after Luru apologised.
Rusty’s dream was to one day leave the village and become an adventurer.
It was an occupation that didn’t exist in Luru’s time as the demon king, but these days it existed as a special job.
As for why it was a necessary occupation, to Luru’s shock, it seems that unlike Luru’s time, maps were uncertain, and there were a considerable number of regions that were yet unexplored.
Even places that people had once walked in the past were now regions whose layout and geography were now unknown, and the occupation ‘adventurer’ arose for the sake of searching them.
“‘Adventure, adventure’. Rusty, you haven’t passed Patrick-san’s swordsmanship lessons even now, right? Just when on earth will Rusty be able to leave this village, I wonder?”[‘ittai itsu ni naru koto kashira’]
The one who spoke the words that made Rusty grimace again was one of the childhood friends he had promised to meet today; a pretty girl with dull blonde hair and was known for her bright expression, Mii.
She was 7 just like Luru and Rusty, but perhaps because she was a girl, she had a more realistic outlook than Rusty did.
Having said that though, it was undeniable that she was still a little childish.
You could feel from her voice her fear of Rusty leaving the village.
It was clear as day that feelings of love for Rusty dwelt in her eyes, and because of that, she wanted Rusty to stay in the village forever.
Those feelings were understandable.
But those words had the opposite effect.
Rusty was learning swordsmanship from Luru’s father, Patrick, in order to gain the skill required to leave village, but Patrick was not soft.
Patrick gave Rusty a number of conditions regarding leaving the village.
They were that he needed to master the sword to a certain extent, and use his skill to hunt the low level monsters that lived in the forest at fixed intervals.
To a normal villager like Rusty who didn’t possess any talent, it was a relatively strict task, and because of that Rusty continued to train the sword each day.
Regardless, Patrick rarely praised people, so Rusty was steadily growing impatient.
He occasionally grumbled that he would never, ever receive a pass.
Mii had pointed this out to him just now.
Though a slightly threatening atmosphere began to surface,
“Now, now, isn’t it fine? It’s important to have a dream. I don’t think that he intends on holding you back, and if it does come to that, you can just think about it then, you know?”
The one who advised Mii and Rusty was the final person they had promised to meet up with today; a girl two years older than Luru, Yuuri.
Her silky, grey hair was beautiful, and with azure eyes, she was a fairly good looking girl.
You could imagine that in 10 years she would be quite a beautiful woman, but she loved Rusty.
It made you want to wonder, ‘just why is Rusty this popular?’ but it was because Rusty gave off this feeling that made you want to worry about him.
It was probably this that drew the two girls in.
While thinking that it was a pleasant[/cute/charming] situation, Luru often hung out with these three in the village.
“Well, it’d be nice that happened one day… More importantly, we’re meeting here because something is happening today, right? You still haven’t told me why we’re meeting here…”[Note: Luru uses ‘ore’]
Right.
Yesterday, Rusty told Luru to meet them here today, but when he had asked about why, Rusty replied “It’ll happen tomorrow, so look forward to it” and wouldn’t tell him.
It didn’t seem that they were just meeting here to play and he could tell this from the fact that when it came to today’s promise, Rusty seemed quite excited, but he didn’t know why.
In the end he couldn’t find out even if he asked Rusty, so he still didn’t know why they were gathered here today, but when Luru asked again just now, Rusty grinned and spoke.
“Yeah… Actually, the old man at the inn said that today, adventurers would be coming to the village! Real adventurers!”
At Rusty’s words, Luru, Mii and Yuuri all widened their eyes.
Adventurers were essentially a profession that searched unexplored lands and ruins.
There were also those who did miscellaneous jobs like acting as the guards for merchants or travellers, but they rarely visited this village in the remote rural areas.
However, it wasn’t as though they had never visited at all, and there were cases of low rank adventurers coming here as guards for travelling merchants.
However, those were different to the adventurers that Rusty spoke of.
“Real” he had said.
They were adventurers who were high ranked even amongst adventurers, and lived a lifestyle that you could truly call adventures.
Of course it wasn’t as though to say that low rank adventurers were fake, but what they meant was that the low class adventurers were a little different from those you could call adventurers, so many referred to these as “real” adventurers.
Hearing this, Luru understood why Rusty was a little stimulated.
He was a boy that was aiming to become a real adventurer.
To him, it was the same as heroes visiting the village.
That’s why he had gone out of his way to gather them.
He had probably planned to head with them to the gate where the adventurers would be coming from, and speak to the adventurers about lots of different things.
“If they’re real adventurers, then wouldn’t getting too close to them be dangerous? Lots of people say adventurers are a rowdy lot, you know.” warned Luru, just in case.
Those who would be called real adventurers were, no matter what they were like, strong.
Because of that, there weren’t a few among them who had slightly arrogant demeanours, and he had heard that it wasn’t as though they had never acted violently before.
Of course if they went too out of hand then the organisation known as the Adventurers Guild would expel them and take away their rights as adventurers, meaning that it would be impossible to make a living.
Because of that, there was a certain limit, but if it was just at the level of badly treating some children who got too close, then they tended to overlook it.
That’s why Luru had warned him, but…
“It’s fine, I said! Adventurers are strong, and noble! They’re not gunna do something like act violently!”
Said Rusty, without taking heed.
Mii and Yuuri made slightly anxious expressions, but it seemed that Rusty didn’t see that.
Well, I guess boys with dreams are like this, sighed Luru.
Seeing Rusty behave like this, Luru gave up and decided that if anything happened, it’d be fine if he saved them himself.
Though Luru didn’t know how far his strength went, if it was just at the level where they’d hold back because they were children, then it would probably be fine.
Thinking this, he followed behind Rusty, and the two girls that he dragged along with him.
/Chapter 3 END
Chapter 4 – Adventurers＊
The entrance to the village was connected to a road that branched off a long highway that led all the way to the Royal Capital. Luru had often caught sight of Rusty saying things like “One day I’m going to leave down this road on an adventure!” whilst looking at this road.
From when he was old enough to perceive things, Rusty had always been like this, and his admiration towards adventurers was beyond description in some ways, thought Luru.
Luru had wondered many times just what had made Rusty so engrossed with adventurers, but it was probably that children in the village had little stimulus and too much free time, or so Luru concluded.
In the past when Luru had been in the war, he longed for a peace where you could gaze at the grass in a meadow being blown in the wind, but on the other hand, those who continued to live in such peace might have longed for war or adventure instead.
Even Luru had found these past few years of spacing out just a little boring.
It wasn’t impossible to understand Rusty’s boredom, having been born without something like a past life and having lived in this village all his life, nor his longing towards adventurers.
“…They’re here!”
While Luru, Rusty, Mii and Yuuri were vacantly waiting at the entrance to the village, they saw two figures from the other side of the road.
With the exception of merchants and acquaintances of the villagers, almost nobody came to a frontier village like this.
In particular, considering that nobody had said they were coming today, there was no mistake that the figures were the adventurers that Rusty had heard about.
Like that, the faces of the apparent adventurers finally came clearly into view.
They were a group of two.
One was a brawny, bold-looking man covered in hard armour, and lightly carried a greatsword on his back.
His face was more wild than handsome, and wore an expression you couldn’t feel any darkness from at all.
The other was a woman.
Having said that though, from those long ears of hers and her exquisite beauty, it was clear that she wasn’t a human.
Of the species that god had brought into this world from spirits, she was of the one that boasted the longest lifespan; the ancient race{elves}.
She possessed their characteristics.
The two of them seemed quite like adventurers, and from a glance you could tell that they didn’t do normal jobs; they gave off a feeling of having a few eccentricities.
From Luru’s perspective, he could feel that the two of them held quite the degree of skill.
The quality and quantity of the mana they were clad in, and their skill with it meant that indeed, there was nothing strange about calling people like them ‘real’ adventurers.
Even without being able to see through their real ability, the two of them gave off a difficult to describe atmosphere, so Rusty gazed at the two of them, eyes sparkling.
Even Mii and Yuuri’s eyes seemed to say ‘some really amazing people have come’, and looked like they were looking at something rare.
Normally the two of them would have looked at Rusty’s dream with less passionate eyes, but today alone was different.
I wonder if one day the two of them will be influenced by Rusty and aim to become adventurers as well, Luru suddenly wondered.
Not just a few young people left the village.
There was also the fact that the village alone wouldn’t be able to support a large number of people, but above that was the longing for the city, and many ended up leaving for the city, saying they’d become adventurers like Rusty, or the apprentices of some merchant somewhere.
Although the village wasn’t declining because of this, those left behind felt an indescribable loneliness.
Even if one day, they themselves would also leave.
While he was thinking about such things, the two adventurers finally arrived before their eyes.
Looking at them from up close, they didn’t really seem to be the violent type, so Luru felt a little relieved that they didn’t seem they would suddenly treat Rusty and the others as a nuisance and hit them or anything.
“What? You brats here to receive us?”
Just as they arrived at the village, having caught eye of Luru and his friends, the swordsman asked them this, rubbing his chin in confusion.
The elven woman smacked the swordsman’s arm and spoke,
“As if. Sending kids to receive adventurers is dangerous, so nobody would do it. They’re probably here to sightsee… Isn’t that right?”
The elven woman tilted her head as she asked Rusty.
Though he was bewildered at suddenly being spoken to, perhaps thinking that it wouldn’t be good to lie, he frankly muttered in a feeble voice,
“Y-, yes… That’s right.”
“Seeee? It was just like I said! In villages like this, there are quite a few kids who want to become adventurers, after all… You kids want to as well, right?”
“Yes… One day I’ll become a real adventurer!”
said Rusty as he raised his hand above him.
Perhaps feeling something from that, the swordsman patted Rusty’s head.
“Hahaha. I see, I see. Well, I’m not gunna say that it’s impossible. The road to adventurers is open to everyone, after all… Just, if you’re not saying it as a joke, but are seriously aiming for it, you gotta train. Adventurers who aren’t skilled are just gunna die, yanno.”
“Yes!”
“Good answer… Alright! Since you have some promise, how ’bout I tell you some stories of my adventures! Or so I say, but there’s no point in standing around. Mind showing me to the inn?”
“With pleasure!”
Seemingly hitting it off in that odd manner, the two of them walked shoulder to shoulder into the village.
Luru watched them go.
Mii and Yuuri sighed and muttered,
“It’d be nice if you didn’t fire Rusty up too much…”[Mii]
“I wonder if boys stay the same no matter how old they get…”[Yuuri]
before chasing after the other two.
Hearing this, the elven woman’s face cramped a little, and bringing her mouth to Luru’s ear,
“…Their relationship seems a little complicated, huh? Those kids, I mean.”
“Mmn, well… It’s the so called ‘love triangle’ isn’t it?”
Absentmindedly replied Luru, as he watched the four of them go.
Seemingly agreeing, the elven woman went ‘mhm’ as she nodded, and then tilted her head in confusion.
“Mn…? Huh, then what about you?”
It seemed that she found it odd that Luru wasn’t involved in the love triangle.
Luru thought about how to appropriately express his position, and then spoke,
“I’m an onlooker, I guess.”
“…You’re a strange one, aren’t you? You probably can’t tell since you’ve only been in this village, but those two will grow up to be quite cute before you know it, you know? If you make a promise with one of them now… [promise to get married etc.]”
To the woman who was giving advice that an adult shouldn’t give to a little seven year old [the advice is shameful, and not something an adult should be doing], Luru made a fairly ironic smile that you wouldn’t find on a child, and replied,
“These kind of things are more fun to watch, you know.”
The elven woman grimaced at his words.
Then, shaking her head,
“I retract my previous comments. You’ve quite the nasty hobbies, haven’t you.”
Well, I can’t exactly deny that, thought Luru, and decided to end their idle chat for now as he changed the subject.
“Hahah, well anyway, even if you are an adventurer, you must be tired, correct? Shall I escort you to the inn?”
“Eh, yeah. Right. Please do. We were attacked by quite a few monsters on the way here, so I am pretty tired…”
It seemed that the woman really was tired, as she made a weary expression.
She’d best rest up early today, thought Luru, and he politely guided the elven woman to the inn.
Luru hadn’t thought at the time that his concern would be wasted.
◇◆◇◆◇
“Oi, bring me some alcohol!”
“Me too!”
That night, the bar connected to the only inn in the village was doing good business.
Each day this bar would be lively with drinking village men, but today was even more loud and boisterous than usual, and the zeal was amazing.
And it was little wonder that the heart of that noisiness was the adventurer pair.
The men in the village were happily listening to the adventurer man, as he told stories in a good mood.
The ones listening to his stories weren’t just adults, but children as well.
To the villagers who had little stimulation, stories from outside travellers were one of their few pleasures, and would be popular enough to draw a crowd like this one.
Moreover, the two of them said that they would shoulder all of the alcohol bills today, so more villagers were gathered than usual.
The knowledge that the two of them didn’t have overbearing, or violent personalities, and were just fun people quickly spread through the village via the owner of the bar, and because the villagers judged that it would be fine to have children there as well, the village children were gathered there too.
The women listened to the elven woman’s stories, and you could even say that all the people in the village were gathering here by turns.
“Gran! Tell us your next story!”
Gran was the name of the swordsman adventurer.
According to Rusty, he was a high ranked adventurer, and it was obvious to those in the bar that there was no mistake about being one of the so-called “real” adventurers. You could feel the existence of danger and treasure from the stories he told, and the man had a strange persuasive power to him.
The name of the elven woman was Yuumis and there was no mistake that she was an elf, but despite the fact that elves normally never left their village, she was an oddball that was essentially a runaway.
With magical ability that was eminent even amongst her village, nobody could stop her from doing so.
You could tell that she was quite the tomboy.
The stories of their adventures were just one crisis after another, and mostly about how they overcame them, so they were interesting stories with a lot of climaxes and strongly drew in the interest of the villagers.
Usually though it was because one of the two had been caught up in some strange danger, and the other one would have to rescue them with this or that method, but regarding this the two of them would lay the blame on the other and get into a fight, which everyone would stir up.
“That time was because Yuumis had some weird curiosity. Normally if there was a weird protrusion in a ruin, you’d be careful, yeah? And yet this woman went “Well, it’ll work out somehow”, reaches out her hand from behind me and bloody pushes it! She’s an idiot, yeah!? No matter how archeologically important it is, or what a historic discovery it is, you have to be alive first of all for it to matter! You have to value your life, damnit!”
“Hahhh!? If we’re going to start saying that, then it applies to you as well! If I remember correctly… that started when you began speaking nonsense about joining some fighting tournament! While I was wondering why on earth I had to participate without even having it explained to me, when I found out that you had made some bet with a nasty noble I really wanted to slap you, you know! I mean, it’s not like I really care! If it was only you participating, that is! But it was a party system, and not only that, but for only the two of us to participate when the maximum party size was 6!? You’re an idiot! An idiot! Not only that, each time we won we’d get booed, and have weird assassins sent after us! Entering a tournament like that, are you retarded!?”
“You-,… That was because that noble bastard was trying to use the debts of a woman with sick children as a threat to make her his mistress, so I was just thinking of doing something about it…!”
“It’s because you do the same thing each and every time that there’s no end to it! Idiot!”
“If you’re gunna be saying that then don’t you do the same bloody thing!? That time when you started going on about collecting the horns of a dragon for medicine, I prepared myself for death yanno!”
“Th-, that was…!!”
That kind of back-and-forth continued the whole time, and the villagers enjoyed themselves listening to it.
Rusty was there too, but each time he heard the story of one of their adventures his eyes would sparkle even brighter, and in the end he ended up asking Gran to take him as an disciple, but was rejected and looked like he was about to cry.
However, when he dropped the conditions to being accepted as a disciple if he managed to become an adventurer, the negotiations started looking unexpectedly good.
According to Luru’s father, Rusty’s talent wasn’t too bad, and if it was just the level of becoming an adventurer, then in a few years he’d be able to make it happen.
It might have been almost a fact at that point that he would end up as Gran’s disciple.
The time passed enjoyably like that, and when the night got late, people started dispersing in small groups.
Everyone seemed to have had fun, and amongst the people happily returning home, Rusty, Mii and Yuuri looked extremely lonely.
It goes without saying when it comes to Rusty, but Mii and Yuuri seemed to have also become completely attached to the two of them after conversing for a little while, and it seems they were lonely about parting.
According to their chats in the bar, the purpose of the pair’s visit this time was because apparently there was a ruin in the forest near the village, and Yuumis had a personal interest in it.
When they had said that it was just a personal interest in the end, you could really feel their eccentricity, and perhaps it was because they had come all the way here for such a reason that they could be called real adventurers.
They had touched upon the subject of the ruin in question during their talks in the bar, but it was apparently a place that the villagers knew well, and wasn’t anything that amazing.
However, Yuumis was of the opinion that something was there.
So she said, and this was also because she had come across the same type of ruin in various places, and no matter where they were, she couldn’t figure out what their purpose was, and was curious about it.
That’s why to find out what they held in common, she was dropping in to visit those types of ruins whilst on her journey.
Regarding the ruin in question,
“That’s definitely something built by the ancient demon race! That’s it! There’s no mistake!”
and so on, said Yuumis again and again, and each time Luru would jolt and react but,
“As if you’d just find ancient demon ruins lying about in the open! Even if you did find one, just how would you even decide that it was built by the ancient demons!”
and the like, retorted Gran, and Yuumis would become crestfallen.
In Yuumis’ opinion, the legend of the ancient demon race was a type of romance.
It wasn’t as though he couldn’t understand those feelings, but Gran was the one who made more sense.
In this age it was considerably difficult to determine who made a relic, and when, and it was even more difficult when it came to the things the ancient demon race had built thousands of years ago.
At any rate, there were almost no documents on such a thing.
Even so, it seemed that there were many like Yuumis, who wanted to find them and desperately exerted herself to do so, but even to this date there was apparently no precedent of anyone having succeeded.
It was a difficult task.
In other words, they also had another reason for coming to this village this time, and were just taking the opportunity to check the ruin while they were at it.
It wasn’t just Yuumis who did things like this, because Gran did as well. When it came to things like fighting tournaments, if they were in a nearby town, it seems that Gran would visit without fail.
It sounded like quite a fun journey to Luru.
It was because the two were the way they were, they said they would be heading to the forest early tomorrow morning, so the next time Rusty and the two girls would be able to meet them would be after they came back from the forest and had completed their goals.
You could understand their loneliness because for a while they wouldn’t be able to meet with the pair, and even then, the two would soon leave the village.
However, even having said that, it was obvious that they couldn’t just stay here forever.
And so all of them were taken home by their parents.
The last ones remaining were Luru and his mother Medea.
His father Patrick wasn’t on break right now, and so wasn’t at home.
Because of that, only the two of them came today.
Despite her appearances, Luru’s mother was good with alcohol, and despite the fact that she had drunk quite the volume tonight, her demeanour was the same as always, and her gait was sure and steady.
“Luru. Shall we go home now?”
Said his mother, to which Luru nodded and replied,
“Yeah. Let’s.”
Waving back at the adventurer pair who were waving from the entrance of the bar/inn, the two of them began to walk.
Whilst walking hand-in-hand with his mother, he gazed up at the starry sky.
The stars that were suspended there hadn’t changed a great deal since those few millennia ago.
The stars that he had seen back then were still suspended there, and helped him notice the link between the Luru who was the demon king, and the Luru that existed now.
His mother looked up at the night sky as well, and suddenly, she opened her mouth,
“Hey, Luru?”
“What?”
“One day, will you also…”
Though she had begun saying something, she shut her mouth.
And then without continuing to the end,
“Mm~mn. It’s nothing.”
“Okay.”
With just those few words, Luru could understand what she was going to say.
His mother knew.
She knew that one day Luru would also try to leave the village.
Why it was she had noticed this, he didn’t know.
However, when the day came that he was going to leave, he would need to have a proper talk with her.
So thought Luru, as he hurried home.
It goes without saying that at the time, Luru had no idea that a huge incident was going to occur tomorrow.
/Chapter 4 END
Chapter 5 – The Ruins＊
No matter what it may be, repeated practice is essential.
There’s a saying amongst those who need to maintain some kind of skill that goes ‘Rest for one day, and you’ll have wasted three’, and this went for magic and martial arts as well.
Luru was one of those who believed in these words, so he would never miss practice for a single day. He could now move in ways that he couldn’t as a baby, and practised not just magic, but swordsmanship too.
Early every morning after having breakfast, he’d practise mana manipulation and swordsman in a place with nobody else around, a little removed from the village.
The swordsmanship techniques he practised was the form he learnt in the past.
In other words, it was the ancient demon race style, or the demon king style perhaps you should say.
He was also learning modern human swordsmanship from his father, Patrick, but when he moved on a whim, it was his old swordsmanship that came out.
Of course he couldn’t use these techniques when practising with his father.
His father was a knight that served the country, and not only was he quite skilled himself, it seemed that it was easy for him to see through the principals behind his opponent’s techniques.
As long as this was true, if he started using the techniques that he used as a demon king, his father would surely feel that something was out of play.
That’s why Luru used nothing but modern swordsmanship when he practised with his father.
Furthermore, learning new techniques meaning practising with nothing but those new techniques was pretty good training, so he didn’t have any complaints in particular.
For when he would leave the village one day, he’d try and preserve as many of the ancient demon style techniques as possible, and keep them as his trump cards, he thought.
For that sake, there was no choice but to reach a practical level of skill in the style his father taught, and because of that he focused and earnestly repeated the things his father taught.
Of course even so, his original style of combat was none other than the one that was supported by his huge mana and physical ability.
The reason he was able to make the most efficient and logical use of these advantages was because the demon race with magical and physical ability far above humans had spent long years creating these many techniques.
That’s why it was necessary for him to practice the many techniques of the ancient demon style of swordsmanship and magic so that he would be able to use them without a problem in his human body, so he could use them when he really needed them in the future.
He continued to wholeheartedly train so he would be able to use both the human techniques and the ancient demon techniques.
This would take more than ordinary effort.
His days would start with training mostly ancient demon style techniques in the early morning, and then training with Rusty the human swordsmanship he had learned his father once the sun had risen.
The days when he trained with Rusty were often arrangements from the day beforehand, and it wasn’t something they did every day.
Because of that, it wasn’t rare that he would spend the whole day training by himself as he did today, and immersing himself in training ancient demon techniques all day.
Listening to the cries of birds in the morning mist during training calmed him down, and he could feel his mind sharpening.
Perhaps because of his training each day, he could feel the mana in his body circulating as he wished, and because his physical ability had weakened since becoming a human, through the circulation of mana, he could feel himself getting closer a step at a time to his old self.
Passing his days like that, he recalled a number of things.
Most of them were memories of his time as a demon king.
The final battle with the hero.
He remembered the many techniques the hero had shown him, refined enough that even the demon king had had a tough battle.
Lately he had been thinking of recreating(/reproducing) those techniques, and though he found that he still couldn’t do it, it was a good way to kill time.
And like that, after reviewing his techniques from when he was a demon king, and swinging his wooden sword(practising) so as to usurp the techniques that the hero had used in his memories, he would end.
By the time he had finished all of his practice, the sun would usually set, and he’d carry home the empty lunchbox that his mother had prepared for him. Such was his daily routine.
Normally the village women would finish doing the daily things they needed to, like working the fields, and would be chatting with each other for example, and the smell of cooking dinner would waft about.
However, that day was different, and Luru noticed the village being more flurried than usual.
The women wore uneasy expressions, and the men were busiedly running about.
Wondering what was going on, Luru asked one of the village girls he was acquainted with.
“Did something happen? Every seems oddly unsettled.”
When he did, she replied with discomfiture visible in her expression.
“That’s… It seems that Rusty and the rest aren’t here. Even though they searched for them, they can’t find them!”
Were it just that much, it would be just be something common so it didn’t seem like it would be enough to fluster them so much, or so Luru thought, but it seems that it wasn’t so simple an issue.
The village girl continued.
“If they were just somewhere in the village it’d be fine but… I mean, look, those kids, and Rusty in particular admried adventurers, right? That’s why, the adventurers from yesterday, umm…? [(What were their names again?)]”
“Gran and Yuumis?”
“Right. We were wondering if perhaps Rusty and the others followed after them…”
The first thing he thought of when he heard that was though Gran and Yuumis were certainly quite the oddballs and carefree, he didn’t think they were the type to bring children to dangerous places.
And the villagers should have understood that as well, after speaking with them yesterday.
But what she was worried about was probably something completely different.
That is, the concern that they hadn’t been taken along by Gran, but had tailed Gran of their own accord.
When Luru suggested this, she agreed with him and said with a nod,
“Right! That’s exactly right! That’s why everyone is worried… It’d be great if they were actually in the village and we were worried for nothing but… Ahh[Ohhh], talking like this just makes me more worried. I’ll go help search!”
Saying so, she ran off to search for them.
Luru considered things.
It was natural to search for them, and he had to as well.
But where should he begin with?
Since the villages were searching inside the village he thought that he should search in the forest, but the forest was wide.
Just where on earth should he begin?
However, yesterday Gran and Yuumis had mentioned the ruin.
Luru remembered the men of the village telling them the location.
Being the case, if they had followed after Gran and Yuumis, then they’d have headed towards the ruin.
Having come up with a plan for now, Luru headed to the village entrance.
When he did, he saw somebody running towards the village.
Looking carefully, he found it was somebody he knew.
A woman with long ears, beautiful skin, and a slender body.
She was the elven woman, named…
“Yuumis!”
“…You’re, Luru-kun!? Why are you here?”
Having run up to Luru, though Yuumis looked a little surprised to see him, her expression immediately stiffened and she said,
“Stand back a little! I’m going to place a barrier around the village, okay!?”
“A barrier? Why?”
“I’m kind of lacking time, so be quiet for a moment… 『O pure spirits of the forest… Lend me your power. With my mana as recompense, create a wall that separates the inside from the outside』”
Yuumis had already begun chanting without delay.
Her chant was very familiar to Luru’s ears, formed from the proper grammar and syntax that he was used to, but right now wasn’t the time to think about that.
What was the bgiger issue was that Rusty, Mii and Yuuri were in the forest.
Yuumis said that she was spreading a barrier.
Though he didn’t know why she was doing so, the spell she was chanting was for a barrier of absolute separation.
In other words, if she finished chanting this, he wouldn’t be able to leave the village.
Luru intended to search for them in the forest, and if he couldn’t do it himself then he was going to have the adults in the village do it, so letting Yuumis do this would be extremely troubling for him.
Thus, Luru said,
“Please wait a bit! Rusty, Mii and Yuuri are missing right now!”
“What was that!?”
For a moment, Yuumis’ chanting was interrupted.
Luru replied.
“We can’t find them! They probably aren’t in the village. Everyone is wondering if they went into the forest! That’s why I have to go find them! Please wait!”
Yuumis’ eyes widened in shock.
With this, Yuumis will definitely stop her magic, thought Luru.
However after thinking for a moment, what left Yuumis’ mouth was unexpected.
“…I’m sorry. I can’t stop. 『…Mysterious Wall{Arcanuma Wall}!』”
And like that, Yuumis completed her spell.
The mana she released spread across the entire village, and separated the inside of the village from the outside with a transparent barrier.
Spreading even into the sky, the hemispherical barrier probably blanketed almost all of the village.
The extremely large scale magic wall would probably protect the village from whatever invaders came.
And it also meant that the villages wouldn’t be able to leave the village either.
“Why!?”
Shouted Luru.
Yuumis looked apologetic, but gave a resolute reply.
“To protect the villagers… Please understand.”
“As in, why do they need to be protected…”
“Yesterday we mentioned the ruins, right? Today, Gran and I had entered there, but there weren’t any new discoveries to speak of. That’s why we left the ruins and were going to head back to the village… but immediately afterwards, the mural on the ruins started to glow, you see. A part of the wall started to crumble. And from there appeared a type of Magus Machine that we’ve never seen before…”
The term ‘Magus Machine’ referred to a mana-powered device that was either difficult, or impossible to produce with modern techniques. Normal devices that used mana were called ‘Magus Tools’.
Magus machines were primarily excavated from ruins, and the manufactured ones required great funds and techniques, but to find such things in a ruin near a backwater village like this…?
Luru tilted his head [in confusion].
Also the fact that the Magus Machines suddenly started operating was also extremely bizarre.
Yuumis continued.
“Right now Gran is fighting with those Magus Machines. I was going to do so as well, but as it turned out a few of them started flying into the air, you see. They weren’t really flying all that fast, but they managed to escape… They were headed towards the village. In terms of power, they weren’t really that big of a threat so I left those up Gran and headed here to protect the village… Look. Speak of the devil.”
Yuumis looked up into the sky.
When she did, she found Magus Machines flying about with their whirling propellers.
They weren’t all that big.
They were a little larger than a child, and smaller than an adult man, so they didn’t look that dangerous.
Built looking like large wasps with their wings plucked off, and a propeller stuck to their head.
Their leg portions were hollowed cylinders, and all of them were headed towards the village.
“…? I wonder what those cylinders are?”
Yuumis tilted her head to the side.
However, Luru knew what they were.
They were Magic Cannons{Magia Cannon}, a magic weapon produced during the war between the demons and humans.
Weapons that were invented so that even people without mana could use them.
He knew from a book that the only ones that remained in the modern era were the pistol models{Handgun Type} that were produced during their early days.
However, the ones equipped by the Magus Machines floating before their eyes were larger in diameter, and shouldn’t have existed in this era.
From this, Luru understood. That in other words, Yuumis was absolutely correct when she said that she had found an ancient demon ruin.
And what this meant was that the wasp-model Magus Machines floating before them were extremely dangerous.
Magus Machines were fundamentally multi-purpose machines created by the demon race.
Naturally their targets were set as humans, and if left to their own devices, they would continue to attack humans.
The machines that Yuumis said had escaped weren’t necessarily just these ones. There was also the possibility that they had flown to nearby villages.
Once he thought of that, it became obvious that he needed to stop them at the root.
If he remembered correctly, in Luru’s memory these types of Magus Machines would normally operate within a radii of a base, and you also stopped them from there.
In this case, that base would be none other than the ruin that Yuumis had found.
Luru had no memory of such a base being there, but if it were an extremely small one, it wouldn’t be strange if Luru didn’t know about it.
At any rate, he needed to immediately head to the ruin.
Thinking this, Luru spoke to Yuumis.
“Yuumis. There’s somewhere that I need to go immediately.”
“Haah?[Whaat?] What you need to do is go home to your mother or something. Leave this up to adventurers like Gran and I… Kya-!”
A huge bang resounded.
It was the attack from the Magia Canons of the wasps floating in the air.
Yuumis had been surprised by the first attack, but it seemed that she immediately understood that it was an attack, and calmly began concentrating on maintaining the barrier.
Fortunately, the barrier Yuumis created certainly seemed to have an effect, and didn’t even budge from the attack.
It seems that the title ‘real adventurer’ wasn’t for sure.
Luru felt relieved at this fact.
It was relief that he could probably leave the village to Yuumis.
That’s why he said,
“I’m worried about Rusty and the others. I can’t just hide in the village[tremble here], you know… Yuumis, I’ll leave the vilalge to you.”
“…No matter what you say, I’m not going to release the barrier, you know? You’re a child. There’s nothing you can do anyway.”
Because it looked like she didn’t want to say it, but felt like she had to, for an instant Luru wasn’t sure how to respond.
However, it was a race against time now.
Luru decided to just to it, and decided to act overbearingly like.
“That’s fine. It’s not like I need your permission anyway. [I’m just going to do as I like, anyway.]”
Saying so, Luru touched the barrier.
As expected, his hand was stopped by a hard, and cold translucent wall, and he couldn’t leave the village.
Seeing this, Yuumis looked at him in pity and said,
“You might not know, but this type of barrier won’t let anyone pass without my permission. Of course, that includes you. That’s why it’s poi-… !?”
However, Yuumis saw something unbelievable.
Luru’s hand had completely passed through the barrier that should have stopped everything.
“W-, why!? What’s going on!? I didn’t give you permission…”
To the panicking Yuumis, Luru apologetically said,
“Sorry. I overwrote your magic sequence. With this, your barrier is mine. …I was a little worried about its strength, so I reinforced it. I’ll be leaving the mana to you, Yuumis. With your mana, you’ll be able to last a whole day, right?”
“Overwrote the sequence!? There’s no way that you could do that! Not only that, but for one of my magic sequences to…”
Perhaps because she couldn’t believe what had happened, her hand touched the barrier as she tried to leave it.
Unfortunately, however, the barrier wouldn’t let her out.
It was natural. The barrier was already under Luru’s control.
No matter who they were, those on the inside wouldn’t be able to leave.
“Why can’t I pass through!? It’s my barrier!”
Even when she struck the barrier, there was no response at all.
And beyond it, stood Luru.
Trying to bring Luru back somehow, her face was stuck to the barrier as she continued to strike it.
But it was to no avail.
“Whyy!? Whyyyyy!?”
Seeing Yuumis who had already been reduced to a comedy skit, Luru stifled a laugh, and said to her,
“Sorry, Yuumis. I’m going to go search for Rusty and the others. I’ll stop the Magus Machines too.”
“Stop right thereee! Heeeyy!”
Screamed Yuumis, her face still plastered to the barrier.
However, Luru didn’t listen to her order.
At this rate, not just his friends, but the village would be in danger too.
Thinking this, Luru ran mana through his body.
His physical capabilities rose, and Luru ran from the village at a speed beyond humans.
Seeing this, Yuumis slid down the barrier to the floor, and said just a few words.
“…What the heck is that kid…?”
/Chapter 5 END
First of all, Yuumis is the type that speaks ‘kashira‘s and ends with a lot of ‘wa‘s. So I guess you could say she’s fairly elf-ey. Ah, but she’s also not particularly polite. Not really sure how I should do this.
For spells, technology and the like, usually it will have some kanji for the meaning, and the stuff in the {} is how it’s pronounced.
Arcanuma Wall is probably ‘mysterious wall’ in another, fictitious language. Also note that the ‘meaning‘ section of the spell name would have been read ‘Shimpi no Kabe‘, so the ‘Wall‘ part in ‘Arcanuma Wall‘ is plenty foreign enough for them[Japanese].
Also unsure if I should leave all instances of 魔導 as ‘magus’. I’ve read 200+ chapters up to the very latest chapter, and am still unsure as to whether there’s a significance in the fact that they use ‘魔導’ or not. As a word, it’s just another way of saying ‘magic’, but in this series there might be some significance.
Ahh, and I’m still very bothered about the 魔法使い、魔術師 and 魔導師 business. Geez…
お兄ちゃん、やめてぇ！ 