While Lloyd and friends were locked in their battle, seven hooded figures had gathered around a desk in the basement of a wooden hut on the outskirts of Ishtar.
“Seems like our plan is proceeding smoothly,” gleefully commented one of the figures.
“Even S-rank adventurers can’t hold a candle to those numbers!”
“I doubt even the city’s Hero could defeat a few thousand monsters!”
“Still... I hear the Hero and his party are quite formidable.”
“Preposterous! They lost to mere golems that were only slightly buffed! Don’t you think he’s perhaps a bit too weak compared to the other Heroes?”
“Indeed. That female shieldmaster lost her whole hand after just a slight encounter with a wolf!”
One of the hooded figures chuckled. “What a farce!”
“The rumor that the holy maiden can heal all wounds has got to be a lie! That trifling Hero and his party members... Our plan is sure to prove a success.”
“Yeah... And it’s all thanks to the boss and that girl.”
The hooded figures turned toward a corner of their room, where a girl was chained to the wall. Her body was gaunt, and her clothes were in tatters. She was covered in bruises.
“What great magic! We better keep using it.”
“Indeed. We’ll work her like a slave until she keels over!”
“Exactly! With her, monsters bow at our will!”
One of the hooded figures grinned sinisterly at the staff in his hands, which was adorned with a black stone at its tip. While smaller than the stone they had left in the field, it emitted the same black smoke and same disquieting glow.
“Well, let’s put personal matters aside for now. You all remember what the boss said, right? All of this is essential for His revival! We can afford no mistakes, and we must make this plan a success. This is all for the boss, for the Demon King!” The man’s expression was serious as he spoke, and once those words left his mouth, the others shot into the air.
Then, they vowed the same oath.
“For the Demon King!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Phew... It’s over!”
Yui and Daggers had returned from eradicating the other monsters. From what I could tell, they didn’t seem to have suffered any major injuries—they were practically unscathed. They really did deserve the title of S-rank adventurer.
I activated my detection magic just to double-check, but there were no monster signals nearby. Relieved to see all of us had made it through fighting the hordes in one piece, I let out a sigh.
But it was too early to relax just yet. I slowly lifted my heavy body back to my feet and glanced at Silica, who was still on the ground. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I was able to rest for quite a while.” She slowly returned to her feet as well. Her complexion had greatly improved, likely because her MP had recovered too. She seemed ready for the next leg of our journey.
“Now...” I turned toward Ishtar. I had a bad feeling about all this. “Yui. We need to hurry back to town.”
“I mean, I guess we can, but...don’t you need some rest?” she asked, looking worried. She was probably concerned about my condition, and to be honest, I did want to rest. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. If I was right, then...
“The perpetrator behind this likely has his eyes set on Ishtar.”
“Huh?!”
Yui and the others looked shocked. It made sense—they probably had a hard time believing Ishtar was the real target. However, that’s what made the most sense.
I explained my reasoning to the others. “This quest was a trap, meant to send the S-rank adventurers out of town without raising suspicion, and then dispose of us.”
I had no proof, but I had a hard time believing the monster hordes we saw were the only ones being manipulated. If we assumed all the monsters in the forest had fallen under the spell, then what we had seen didn’t account for all of them. They had to be somewhere else.
“B-But... Why would someone do that?”
“I...don’t know.”
Ishtar was a vibrant city, but there were plenty similar in the kingdom. Many knights were stationed there, and its defenses were staunch. They even had a Hero—one of only four in the whole continent. If their goal was to simply hurt the kingdom’s economy, they would have picked an easier target.
“Then, just why did they...?”
I had no idea what whoever had attacked us was after.
“Hey, Lloyd? Ishtar’s got knights and a Hero. It’s not gonna fall so easily.” Cross was right. Ishtar would be hard to topple.
“That’s true, but...”
Allen and the others were in Ishtar. No matter how many monsters besieged the city, they’d still be able to put up a good fight. But even Allen and his party weren’t perfect, and even they made mistakes. Defeat was still possible.
“Let’s hurry, just in case.”
“Yeah, you’re right...”
We got ready for our journey and dashed off toward Ishtar.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Lloyd’s buffs really are amazing...”
“They are! Even just being able to run so fast is wonderful enough, but I can’t believe we’re not even out of breath!”
Yui glanced at me.
“I mean, you might say that, but...” I didn’t remember doing anything all that special. I had just improved a strengthening buff by extricating all the unnecessary bits and fine-tuning it into a spell meant to aid in running. But improving on a spell wasn’t anything all that impressive.
“Hey, Lloyd? I heard from a friend that it takes tons of MP to keep casting buffs for so long.”
“I’ve heard the same. How do you manage it, Lloyd?”
Both Yui and Silica shot me a worried look. Novices or white mage newbies might have a hard time keeping their buffs up, but once you got the hang of it, it was easy to cut back on MP consumption and make improvements to the spells. And even if you never truly got the hang of things, you’d get used to it eventually once you cast enough buffs. Silica’s and Yui’s acquaintances just happened to be newbies. After a few more years, they’d think nothing of it.
On multiple occasions, Master Merlin had abandoned me in the forest, giving me nothing but basic provisions and minimal weaponry. Of course, it was a tall order for a white mage to defeat a monster on his own, and besting a strong monster was near impossible. It took everything in me just to run.
But running alone wasn’t enough to keep the monsters off my tail. I had no choice but to fully utilize my buffs to survive. I cast spells over and over, improving them, and sometimes creating new ones from scratch, and eventually, well... I had naturally learned how to cast continuous buffs for long periods of time and improve upon the basic spells. Thinking back on it now...
“It was great practice...I mean, hell.”
Yeah, infernos and all. There was no glorifying those memories—I could still remember them vividly.
“Hey, Lloyd? What kind of training did she have you do?”
My training? There really was just one word—hell. Still, that was probably normal. Master Merlin was always screaming at me, angrily saying, “How the hell is a white mage supposed to get by if they can’t even do this?!” I was sure all white mages had to traverse the same road.
“Just your average training, I think.”
Yui and Silica exchanged glances. “Lloyd... I don’t think there’s anything normal about what she had you do.”
“Definitely.” The two were in agreement.
Huh. So my training hadn’t even passed the bar of “average.” It was beneath them. They really were S-rank adventurers on a whole other level.
But now that I was a member of their party, I had to be just as skilled as they were. “You’re right. My training really was subpar.”
“Silica... I think he’s misunderstood us. He definitely didn’t get what we were trying to say.”
“Yes, it seems so.”
Yui and Silica stared at me, looking exasperated.
“I see, so my training was so terrible it’s deserving of—”
“Lloyd? Let’s drop this convo. How long will it take for us to reach Ishtar?” asked Daggers, cutting into the conversation. He was right, this was no time to be talking about that. Relying on my memories of our journey here, I estimated our distance to Ishtar to get a base calculation of how long it would take given our current speed. I couldn’t get an exact number, but I had a pretty good estimate.
“Probably...a day, at the least.”
“A day? Well, I guess even that’s a huge improvement...”
It had taken us days to get here, so cutting that down to just one was certainly a job well done. At least, that’s what I thought, but I could sense anxiety in Daggers’s expression. He must have thought it’d take less time to arrive in Ishtar, but this was the full extent of my speed buffs.
“Sorry, this is my limit.”
“Huh? Oh, I wasn’t trying to imply...”
My buffs really were still underdeveloped. Based on what Daggers was saying, it seemed that Crumb’s spells must have been so amazing that mine couldn’t even hold a candle. I really needed to train more...
“Hey, Lloyd? I don’t think your skills are lacking or anything, for the record!” he said.
“Yeah, I really need to train more...”
“Are you even...?”