When Voroderia, God of Darkness, appeared before Theodore, the swordsman didn’t reach for his weapon.
“What do you want from me?” he asked simply.
✦ ✦ ✦
Voroderia was quite surprised. “The others attacked me on first sight… Interesting.”
“I have a world to protect.”
Voroderia laughed, amused. “And you get straight to the point. Makes my job easier.”
Voroderia started walking, and Theodore followed him in silence. The God of Darkness looked around at the human towns.
“Your people trust you. You’re a good king to them.”
“I try to be.”
People who passed them by greeted Theodore. Human culture was thriving as if the dragons’ rule of terror had never wreaked havoc on the land. Voroderia was observing everything with interest.
“Let’s talk business, then. I’m thinking of isolating this world.”
“What?”
“Let’s just say I have something in mind.”
Theodore didn’t protest. He seemed to acquiesce to Voroderia’s demands.
“I’m going to remove you from here along with this world,” said Voroderia. “You will keep it, and nobody will get hurt. I’ll just make it look as if this place has been destroyed, and I’ll go away. How does that sound?”
“Why can’t you leave it as it is?”
“Destroying worlds is my job.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
The God of Darkness laughed. “Okay. I’ll tell you this. It’s to lay the groundwork for a certain other world.”
“I see,” Theodore said briefly, falling silent again.
He understood that Voroderia wasn’t going to give him any detailed answers, so he gave up on asking more questions.
“In the place I’m going to send you to, you will meet others like you. There’s no pressure for you to get along; feel free to fight if that suits you. And don’t worry—a time will come when you’ll be able to get out.”
Voroderia proceeded to excise Theodore’s world from the space it occupied. He gave Theodore the power to enter and exit his world as he pleased, then sent him to a castle from which Theodore couldn’t leave.
✦ ✦ ✦
When he first met Shuutarou, Theodore felt a certain disquiet. Out of the blue, he had a master, a weak, timid boy despairing over being trapped in a world he couldn’t leave from. Theodore had no illusions about what the other Overlords thought of this.
But even as the Overlords treated the boy without due respect, Shuutarou was equally nice to all of them. Theodore thought it would only encourage the others to take even more liberties, but he said nothing.
Then one day, he got a glimpse of his master’s power. The boy used a taboo ability to fuse monsters held in the castle with his pet. The boy could fuse any of his minions, the Evil Overlords included, turning them into another creature, if that was what he felt like doing at the moment.
Having learned of this terrifying possibility, Theodore interpreted his master’s intentions in his own way—that Shuutarou was concealing the true extent of his power to see how the Overlords would behave and find out if they were worthy to be his minions.
Those braggarts show off their power at every opportunity; perhaps he wanted to teach them a lesson…
All Shuutarou needed to make the Overlords obey him was to reveal that he was more powerful than them, but he wasn’t one to blow his own trumpet. Even after the Overlords learned how strong he was, his attitude didn’t change. He didn’t want to force them into submission or order them to do what he wanted, even though they were his minions.
Instead, Shuutarou used his power to restore a ruined world and to create order in it.
“Now I understand…”
The boy reminded Theodore of the friends he’d grown up with, who, like him, wanted to be strong and learned to fight. When they became celebrated heroes of the kingdom, Theodore had noticed the others didn’t battle as much, and he’d taken it as a sign that they’d lost their ambition. It’d taken him this long to realize he’d been wrong.
You knew what truly mattered, more than the quest for power…
His friends had fought not to become stronger, but to protect others. They didn’t refuse to go inside the tower with him because they weren’t curious or lacked confidence—they stayed in order to protect the kingdom and its people.
“Someone’s got to look after the kingdom while you’re away,” one of his friends had said to him, laughing.
At the time, Theodore didn’t understand why his friends wouldn’t come with him. They’d defeated the demon lord, and everything was well in the kingdom. It was much later, when Theodore defeated the dragons, that he reflected on what it took to be a real hero—not only helping people in danger, but preventing that danger in the first place, giving the people the environment they needed to thrive.
This boy understands that…
It’d taken Theodore hundreds of years to understand something that seemed intrinsic to Shuutarou. He thought the boy was born to be a king. Ashamed that he’d been too self-centered to see what his friends had been striving for, Theodore swore to loyally serve the boy who reminded him of them so much.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What are you crafting?” asked Shuutarou.
Theodore had made a silver bow, arrows, and a dagger.
“I’ve used the materials left over after crafting new equipment for you to make a weapon set for Misaki.”
“Oh, it’s for Misaki!”
The gear that Theodore had previously given Misaki could be equipped by players at level 1. Surely, Misaki had been training diligently and would be able to equip higher-level weapons.
“I dunno if I’ll see her again, though…,” said Shuutarou.
“I have no doubt you will.”
Theodore resumed hammering away at yet another creation in his workshop.