As I awkwardly averted my gaze, Prana puffed her chest out and said, “That’s right, Rex is amazing.”
“But I must say, I’m surprised. I never imagined the mansion I was living in had monsters dwelling in its basement...”
“Do you have any idea why that secret door might have been made, Rose?” Nyuuk asked, his eyes glimmering with curiosity.
But Rose just shook her head and replied, “I inherited this mansion from my uncle, so I don’t know too much about it, unfortunately.”
She didn’t look like she was lying, and Nyuuk nodded and said a despondent, “I see.”
“While it was a shock to learn monsters are living in my basement, I’m glad I was able to meet all of you. As you can see, this mansion is a little too big for just one person,” Rose said, looking a little lonely.
“Oh, Rose...” Mana tried to find some words to comfort her, but couldn’t.
Seeing Mana’s expression, Rose immediately plastered on a smile and said in as cheerful a voice as she could muster, “Why not have some tea before you go, everyone? I’d love to hear stories of your many adventures.” We nodded, unwilling to leave her alone again so soon.
❈❈❈
By the time we’d finished our tea and been seen off by a very sad-looking Rose, the sun had completely set.
As we navigated our way back by the light of the streetlamps, Radd stretched and said, “We’ve really gotten a lot stronger, haven’t we? We wouldn’t have stood a chance against those bandaged freaks a few weeks ago!”
“Yeah, and Nyuuk’s support magic has been really helpful!” Mana agreed. “I never knew how powerful adding elemental properties to people’s weapons could be!”
“That’s why I went out of my way to learn this Class’s Skills.” Nyuuk responded. “Though if a certain someone wasn’t so reckless all the time we wouldn’t have had as much trouble with them.”
Radd flushed. “I-I already said I was sorry!”
I smiled as I listened to Nyuuk poke fun at Radd, but after a few seconds I stopped in my tracks and turned back to look at the mansion we’d left. Unlike the rest of the city, which was brightly lit, the area around the Rose Manor was shrouded in darkness.
I’m sorry Nyuuk, but I can’t tell you the truth just yet.
For I, of course, knew exactly what lay at the bottom of that mansion’s basement. One of the six Demon Lords who served the evil god slept down there. And that very Demon Lord was the cause of Freelea’s destruction in Braves and Blades.
❈❈❈
If the evil god Rasulfi was Braves and Blades’s last boss, then the six Demon Lords were the game’s midbosses. I still vividly remembered my duel with the first Demon Lord back when Radd and the others had just cleared the Rainbow Lava Caverns. The Demon Lords were on a completely different level compared to regular dungeon bosses. If I hadn’t won a huge number of Goblin Slaughterers from the casino, Bring would have killed me for sure.
The bosses of the Twelve Ruins of Darkness were also basically like midbosses, but the Demon Lords were on a completely different level. Unlike the Guardians in the Twelve Ruins of Darkness, who only defended the final chambers of their respective dungeons like mechanical dolls, the Demon Lords possessed sentience. They were treated as actual characters by the game, and every one of them had their own goals and reasons for opposing humanity.
Most of the Demon Lords had been pretty popular with the BB’s player base too. Personally, I’d hated them because they’d kept getting in my way during the main story, but I’d seen a decent amount of fanart of all of them floating around online.
Well, they are all pretty memorable characters in one way or another, so I can see why they got popular.
According to the lore, they were monsters who’d evolved into greater beings thanks to the evil god’s power, and they led the other monsters of their race. That meant each Demon Lord had an army of varying sizes at their disposal, and they used actual tactics and strategies to make the most of their army’s unique traits when attacking human cities.
The most dangerous followers of all were those of the fourth Demon Lord, who was the one sleeping at the bottom of Rose Manor. This particular Demon Lord was a vampire, a monster who sucked the blood of humans and transformed them into undead monsters. As a result, they’d been given the moniker, “Speaker for the Dead.” In the game, they’d slowly started transforming the people of Freelea into their servants by sucking their blood, and after enough time passed, Freelea became completely overrun by vampires. I needed to prevent that event from ever triggering, which was why I’d made contact with Rose.
I cut my thoughts short as I spotted the person I’d been searching for: an old lady standing in front of a small general goods store at the corner of a busy street.
“Do you have a minute? Can you tell me if anything’s changed?”
The old lady looked up in surprise, then relaxed and smiled when she saw that it was me. “Well, well, if it isn’t you again. Ask all you want, but things don’t change that quickly, boy. The world turns slowly, just as the Goddess of Salvation wishes. Ho ho ho ho ho.”
“I see. Sorry for wasting your time.”
I bowed in thanks then turned away, gritting my teeth in frustration. The old lady I’d spoken to was an unimportant NPC whose main quirk was that her dialogue options reflected the events you’d cleared and the current state of the world. She’d been nicknamed the Hohoho Hag by the game community. What she’d said just now had confirmed that not a single world event had progressed past its starting point yet. Her words had been the exact same words you heard if you ran to her at the start of the game and talked to her. Whenever big world events occurred or enough time passed, she’d say something completely different.