I knew the defender of the labyrinth. He was one of those they’d called the Five Great Demon Kings during the Second Human Demon War. When I arrived at the site of the final battle, this man was already long dead. He had been the captain of Kishirika’s personal guard. His name was… No, I shall not give his name. This being had the same form, but it wasn’t him.
We were at the deepest point in the Devil’s Cave, so I’d been convinced we’d find someone the spitting image of Laplace. This was an anticlimax.
That this man—loyal but rigid and the type to rush headlong at everything—was the master of the Devil’s Cave… It was hardly living up to its name.
“O-oy! This guy looks nasty…”
“Fwahahaha! It’s true, he looks most fearful! He is no serious threat!” Standing before us was, of course, a headless knight. What had changed from long ago was that he wasn’t holding his head. He wore jet-black armor and was impaled with swords. Whenever he moved, the swords made an awful scraping noise. If memory served, he’d never been one for sticking himself through with swords. Which meant… Yes, I’d thought it obvious how he’d died, but of course, he’d fought to the bitter end. But not with Laplace. He’d led an army half-destroyed by Laplace against the humans. In the end, they’d cut his head off. When you’re not an immortal demon, you die when your head is cut off! I’d thought his body had been wiped out in that explosion, but it turned out he was here! Ah, such a touching reunion. Got me all choked up!
Now’s the time I’d have liked to share a drink and exchange old war stories. Back then, he and I hadn’t seen eye to eye at all, but nowadays! I was sure we could have enjoyed a drink together. Alas, we had to vanquish the guardian if we were to get the object we’d come for. I got straight to it. It’s not like he had a head to drink with anyway! Fwahahaha!
“Fwahahaha! Come and fight me, if you dare!” I raised my fists and charged forward. In the past, I might have balked before this demon king. The captain—now he had been a strong man, especially in single combat! He could even stave off Atofe. Atofe was immortal and had a bottomless reserve of endurance, so he could only ever stave her off, but still! He reigned supreme as the strongest of the Five Great Demon Kings. He was doubtless a power to be reckoned with. Scholarly old me never once picked a fight with him. He’d have sent me flying in an instant. Ever since those days, I’d trained and trained. Using the memory of the time I’d spent wearing the Fighting God Armor, I developed my own unique martial style and honed my muscles so that I could use it. I stayed with Atofe, who beat me to a pulp every day. I worked so that I could act with reckless arrogance too. Who’d have thought the day would come for me to show you the results? Fwahahaha!
“Nghuh!” As I approached him, firing myself up, his fist punched into me and sent me flying. I did three somersaults! My face had caved in. That would soon heal, though.
“Fwahahaha! This is bad! I won’t win like this!”
I got straight up again, fists raised, but the difference in strength was starkly apparent, as expected of the guardian of a high-level labyrinth! He seemed even stronger than I remembered…but no, he’d had this in him before. It was clear that, even with a bit of training and working on my personal fighting style, he still outmatched me. This wouldn’t be an easy battle.
“R-right then, listen up, you got it? He’s got a weak point!”
“Fwahahahaha! Ridiculous! A weak point, him?”
“Yeah, only what the Man-God says is…his weak point’s words! Catch my meaning?”
At Geese’s answer, I stopped moving toward the demon king. The second I stopped, he hit me with the flat of his blade and sent me flying backward.
As I flew, I thought.
Words? Even if I were to say them, he has no ears to hear any!
“…Ahah! I see!”
Words. Words?
It was true that he and I had long fought side by side in the Second Great Human-Demon War. Though we had not come to blows, we had of course exchanged words, and not a few promises. Many of them we had kept, and just as many we had broken.
Hmm, in that case…there are too many to choose from!
“I know not!” I took another punch. No, it didn’t count as a punch. His sword was so blunt that it couldn’t pierce my body.
Ahah, swords! That’s it!
“Long ago, he tried to give Kishirika a sword as an offering! The day before, he said someone broke it, but in fact…the one who broke it was me! I am sorry! I resented the idea of you rising any further! It was an impulse! Forgive me!”
“Gyaaaaah!” He lost it. Though he didn’t have a head, a cry of rage burst out from somewhere. So he could hear without ears! His race’s ears weren’t on their heads, back in the day, so perhaps they also didn’t speak with their throats?
But now wasn’t the time for such inquiry.
I’d been sorry that I wasn’t able to confess to my misdeeds, but then, all you could expect of a sword offered to Kishirika was that it would get used in a party trick and broken anyway. I didn’t feel all that bad.
“C’mon, you must have something else!” Geese barked. “Ain’t you the wise demon king?”
“There are too many possibilities! I can’t narrow them down!”
“Then just go through ’em all!”
So I did.
“Remember when your daughter—”
“That glowing blue horse we found on Ruson Island! That—”
“When we defeated the human army in the Kohiba Hills—”
None of my words got through to him. Every time I said something, his sword flew out and threw me away. If I were an ordinary demon, I’d have died a hundred times over. I called myself the wise demon king, and though I had my own opinions regarding wisdom and knowledge, well, it was damned impressive how the memories kept bubbling up. It was like I was the old me again, reliving my memories. I grew a bit nervous.
“Eh?” I’d gone through a little more than a hundred recollections when I noticed something.
“O-oy! He’s slowed down a bit, hasn’t he?”
The guardian, moving with a horrible racket as his armor screeched and his sword scraped, had lost some of his vigor to be sure. I did not know which of my words had found their mark, but one of them must have.
“Right, now’s ya chance! Don’t give him time to recover!”
No, that’s not right. So I thought as I looked at the loyal guardian. Nothing I’d said had been the answer. The guardian was looking at me like it pained him, like my stories had led him to remember something. Perhaps my old stories had allowed him to somehow realize that I wasn’t an enemy. He’d lost his sense of self, but he knew that I was not someone he ought to turn his sword on. Why did he try so hard to keep fighting? He was the guardian; that was part of it. Monsters were beholden to such roles. Surely it was some regret that had turned him into the guardian. Well, then. I knew what to say to him.
“We demons lost the war, but we were not destroyed, and Kishirika Kishirisu is alive and well. We shall fight another day. Put up your sword.”
The guardian stopped moving. Then, without a word, he slowly knelt, then fell forward. It was as though he was satisfied. He was saying that now he could finally rest.
“Even after becoming the labyrinth guardian, he was still bound by loyalty. What a stick-in-the-mud.”
I hope I won’t become the guardian of a labyrinth after the fight with the Dragon God, I thought as my feet carried me onward.