“This is bad,” said Dotta Luzulas gravely. “It’s over. I’m done for.”
Again? I thought. Dotta had a habit of getting into trouble at least once every three days. It was all because of his damn sticky fingers. How sticky, you ask? Well, so sticky he was found guilty of treason and wound up here, sentenced to be a hero. He’d apparently been involved in more than one thousand cases of burglary before he was arrested by the Holy Knights and thrown in prison. I suppose you could call him a world-class prodigy at petty theft.
Dotta Luzulas would steal anything. I still remember bursting into laughter the day I heard the story of how he stole one of the royal family’s dragons. But my smile vanished as soon as I heard it had eaten his left arm. He was a crazy guy, but so were most heroes.
“Hey, Xylo,” he said. “What do you think I should do? I—”
“About that.” I decided to shut him up, pushing back his face as he approached. “Do you think we can talk about it tomorrow? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re kinda busy right now. They’re working us to death.”
That wasn’t just a metaphor. This was a battlefield. We were in a forest at the northern end of the Federated Kingdom—the last nation left to mankind. The snow was deep, and the wind was so cold that it seemed to pierce our skin.
Humanity was on the verge of losing even this place, known as Couveunge Forest, forever. Due to various circumstances, Dotta and I had been hiding out here since morning. Night was slowly beginning to fall, and it was already obvious how goddamn cold it was going to be.
A deadly mission was waiting for us, too: the Demon Blight. It wouldn’t be much longer until it arrived. And now Dotta, back from scouting, kept mumbling, “This is bad.” Hearing him was giving me a headache—I just wanted him to shut up.
“Dotta, do you know what our job is here?”
“I mean…I’ve got a good idea.”
“Then tell me.”
“We’re going to fight a demon lord,” he muttered, face pale as he slipped a small bottle out of his pocket. It looked like a kind of alcohol from the eastern islands made from beans. Booze like that wasn’t cheap.
“Exactly… By the way,” I said, pointing at the bottle in his hand, “you stole that, too, didn’t you? From the Verkle Development Corporation’s wine cellar, I assume?”
“Heh. Nice, right? I swiped it from one of the high-ranking army guy’s tents.”
Dotta mirthfully took a swig of the high-end alcohol. He looked pretty happy for someone who had just committed theft.
“I snatched the most expensive-looking one. I mean, it’s the owner’s fault for just leaving it out in the open like that.”
“Pretty sure it’s the thief’s fault regardless. Besides, I doubt a guy like you could even appreciate the good stuff.”
I grabbed the bottle out of his hand and took a sip. The alcohol burned as it went down. I was only trying to lighten the mood. I didn’t care how it tasted, and I didn’t want to get drunk.
“This is some strong stuff.”
“Yeah. There’s no way I’d be able to do this otherwise. We’re about to fight a demon lord’s army… There are going to be a ton of them, aren’t there?”
“It’s a big one. Around five thousand faeries were affected. Makes you wanna cry, doesn’t it?”
That was the number we were given anyway. There might be a few less, thanks to our nation’s grand and noble Holy Knights. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, though. Even if they took out one or two thousand, it’d hardly make a difference. Because…