“Like hell you are.” This time, I reached out and grabbed the hand I’d knocked away.
Harissa looked up. She looked straight up at me, tears streaming down her face.
“Don’t you ever say that you deserve to be miserable.”
“Hero?”
“That’s the same as saying it’s normal for you to be miserable, and I refuse to accept that.”
I liked normality. I loved it. That’s what made you happiest.
But what Harissa said was the exact opposite. She said it was normal for her to be miserable. And that... I just couldn’t take it.
“Aaah... God damn it! Fine!”
I roughly scratched my head. Harissa was looking up at me in astonishment.
“Sorry, Satsuki. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise. So just hang in there.” I apologized to Satsuki back on Earth.
I knew I didn’t have time for this... but what could I really do? I was the only one who could save this story, or this poor little girl. So... the normal thing to do was save her, right?
“I’ll defeat the Demon Overlord for you.”
▽
Harissa said that the hero’s first job was to pull out the Hero’s Sword and then gather companions at the tavern. But I didn’t have time.
“B-B-B-B-But you’re going to defeat the Demon Overlord, right?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a wizard and a space king lined up after this.” I didn’t have time to go through the tutorial.
“It’s 2:30, huh?” I’d been here for half an hour. Iris had said her warp would take three hours, so I wanted to get back by then if I could.
So the biggest problem was the time it was going to take to get there.
“Um, hero. You’ve been staring at that thing for a while. What is it?”
“This? It’s called a watch. It tells me the time.”
“Wow. That’s really convenient. So is that a watch, too?” Harissa pointed to the warp watch on my other wrist.
“This is something different. It’s called a warp watch.”
“A warp watch? What does it do?”
“You can calculate coordinates for a place, and input them into this, and it’ll teleport you to that place.” I couldn’t do coordinate calculations though, so it was useless to me. Though if I could use it, I could teleport right past the barrier and into the Demon Overlord’s castle.
As I sighed in frustration, Harissa slowly raised her hand.
“I can do coordinate calculations.”
“Seriously?!”
“Y-Yes. You need to be able to do coordinate calculation to be a summoner, so you can specify where you’re going to do the summon.”
“Yes! All right, can you put them into this, then? What I need is the coordinates for the Demon Overlord’s castle, relative to where we are now.” I told her what I needed and gave her the warp watch.
“Um, there should be a map of the continent somewhere in this room. I’ll look for it.” Harissa charged into the mountain of papers and books.
“Now we can get there. Next up is the weapon.”
The first thing I thought of was the Hero’s Sword. “It’s supposed to be able to cut through magic. Can I use it to defeat the Demon Overlord?”
“I guess my first question would be if you ever learned how to use a sword,” R said.
“Oh...” That’s right. I was just a normal guy. Even if I did have a weapon, it wouldn’t do me any good if I couldn’t use it. I’d never held a sword in my life, so even if I did have the Hero’s Sword, it wouldn’t be of any use to me.
A normal hero would probably start by building up experience points fighting slimes and learning to use his weapon, but I didn’t have the time.
“Well, that’s a problem...”
And then Harissa ran back to me, in the exact same way that she’d run off. “Hero! I finished putting in the coordinates!”
“Really? That was fast.”
“I worked really hard. Now we should be able to jump right to the center of the Overlord’s castle— hwah?!” Before she could finish her sentence, Harissa stepped on some of the papers on the floor and slipped.
I quickly reached out and grabbed her to keep her from falling.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m jes’ fine!” For some reason, Harissa was shaking as she moved away from me. Her face was bright red... Had she hit her nose on my chest?
“Rekka, how were they?” R peered right into my face. I glared back at her to see what she meant. “Her breasts. Her bust. Her boobs, if you prefer. You copped a feel just now, didn’t you?”
“I did not!” My voice was loud enough to startle Harissa.
“H-Hero?!”
“Oh, sorry. It’s nothing.”
Damn it! R got to say whatever she wanted because nobody but me could see her. I cursed at her, silently this time, and went to pick up the warp watch that Harissa had dropped. And then—
“Coordinate entry confirmed.” An electronic voice came from the warp watch. “Ten seconds to warp. Nine. Eight. Seven...”
“W-Wait—!”
Wait a second! Had this thing turned on? Did the impact from hitting the ground flip the switch? Iris hadn’t told me how to cancel the thing. The countdown continued as I panicked, until there wasn’t any time left to look at it at all.
“Whatever! We’ll just go right now!” If I didn’t grab it, the warp watch would go to the Demon Overlord’s castle all on its own. And if that happened, there was no way I was getting back home today.
I told myself that I didn’t have a choice, and then wrapped the warp watch around my wrist.
Harissa grabbed my hand. “I... I’ll go, too!”
“You idiot! Let go—” I tried to shake her off, but I couldn’t do it in time. The countdown read “zero.”
“Initiating warp.”
▽
In the next moment, I found myself in a very cold place.
“H-Huh...?!” My head was spinning. Was it an aftereffect of the warp? I took a look around.
The floor felt cold, so it was probably made of the same stone as the king’s castle, but it was cold in a very strange way. The only light was from the torches on the walls, and the room was too big for them to show any more than their immediate surroundings. There were no windows, so there was no sunlight, and the air was freezing. Who built this place? It’s defective! Someone call the architect!
“Ow... where are we?” I could hear Harissa’s robes rustling next to me as she spoke. She’d ended up coming with me.
“Harissa! Why did you follow me?”
“B-B-Because I couldn’t let you go alone!”
“Why? That’s why you summoned me, right?”
“At first, yes... but when you told me that my problems weren’t your problems, I started thinking.” My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, and I got the sense that Harissa was looking down at the floor.
“What you said was right. This world isn’t your world. Our problems aren’t your problems. But instead of solving our problems ourselves, we tried to turn to you for help. The king, the generals, everyone, even me... we were all really selfish.” Harissa held her staff tight to her chest.
“But then you said you’d fight for us anyway. For this world, which isn’t your own. I’m embarrassed that I was only thinking of myself. So let me fight with you, please.” I could feel Harissa’s resolve, and it was painful.
“Don’t get the wrong idea.” I needed to correct one thing, though. “I’m fighting the Demon Overlord for you.”
“F-F-For me?!”
“Of course.” It would be rude to say that I just took pity on her, so... I didn’t.
“For me...”
“Huh? What’s wrong, Harissa? Is your face red?” Her cheeks were blushing so much that I could see them even in the darkness.
“N-N-No! I-It’s n-nothing!”
“Well, if it’s nothing, then fine...” My ears were stinging after she’d y
elled right next to them... but that didn’t matter.
“So yeah, I don’t want you to be put in danger. I’ll fight the Demon Overlord myself.”
“B-B-But...!”
“I don’t care what you say. I’ll give you the warp watch. Use it to go back to the castle right—”
“No! I’mma fight wit’ you, too!”
This was going nowhere. She’d started to throw a tantrum, and dropped back into her country accent.
As I tried to figure how best to persuade her...
“You there...” I suddenly heard a third voice. It was a low, baritone voice that shook the whole room. It was coming from the back of the room, where the darkness seemed deepest. “Why are you shouting in my bedroom?”
My eyes had finished adjusting to the darkness, and I could see the speaker clearly. The first thing I saw was a huge bed that looked like it could sleep fifty people. I could see a tail the size of a log draping down the side. My eyes followed the tail up to a huge body, framed by wings the size of a ship’s sails. It had four thick, tough-looking limbs. Sharp claws. Hard scales. Fangs. Red eyes, shining in the darkness. A face like a terrible carnivorous lizard, with a crest on top. I’d played enough games to know what this creature was.
“A... A dragon?!”
“Th-The Demon Overlord?!” Harissa and I screamed at the same time.
The scaly, green dragon Demon Overlord narrowed its eyes at us, seemingly annoyed.
“What’s going on? I’ve never seen rotten corpses with such clean bodies.”
“R-Rotten c-c-c-corpses are a kind of m-m-m-monster!”
Thanks for the explanation, Harissa, but that wasn’t what I wanted to know right now. I wanted to know what was going on.
Per usual, I looked to R for an explanation. How many times had I done that today? “Harissa input the coordinates for the center of the island, right? If the Demon Overlord’s castle is at the center of the island, then do you suppose you teleported right into his bedroom?”
Gah! How could I be so precise? No, how could I have such crappy luck?
“Excellent work. You hit the jackpot. Way to go, Rekka.”
“Shut up!” But yelling at R wasn’t going to make this situation any better at all.
I stood between Harissa and the Demon Overlord, and turned to face him. What’s my plan? I don’t have a plan! The Demon Overlord scratched his jaw with fingers thicker than my torso as he looked at us in confusion.
“That girl just called you a hero. But the barrier isn’t broken...”
“Th-That’s right! I’m not a hero!” I nodded frantically as I tried to talk to the Demon Overlord.
“But if you’re not a hero, then who are you?”
“I... I don’t know?”
“I don’t like wasting time with stupid questions.”
“I... I’m just lost!”
“I said, I don’t like wasting time.” Every time the Demon Overlord opened his mouth, the room shook and the stone floor quaked. That was how overwhelming he was. There was no way I could take him in a fight.
I was panicking, and I was having a hard time thinking of things to say. I couldn’t come up with a good lie to get myself out of this! At this rate, it was going to be game over before I could do anything.
This is no good. Calm down, Rekka! Find some way out of this! I patted myself down, looking for some way out of this.
And then my fingers caught on something on my belt. This was...
“A-All right... I’ll tell you the truth.” I summoned up all my courage and steeled myself for what I had to do.
“Oh? And what is that?” I drew the laser gun from my belt and immediately fired it.
“DIE!”
“What?! GWAAAAAH!” The Demon Overlord must’ve been caught off guard, because my crappy surprise attack hit him dead-on.
“Wh-Wh-What the hell?” Wait, that laser beam was huge! This isn’t a laser gun, it’s a laser cannon! A torrent of destructive light poured out toward the Demon Overlord and swallowed the upper half of his body.
And when the light was gone... I saw a hole in the wall leading all the way outside the castle, and the black ash that was all that was left of the Demon Overlord’s upper body.
W-Well, that was cheating, kind of, but if the Demon Overlord’s dead, that’s all that matters, right?
I wasn’t fully satisfied, but Harissa was looking at me excitedly, with stars in her eyes.
“W-W-Wow! I thought the art of light magic was lost centuries ago! You really are the hero of legend, Sir Rekka!”
“Um, well... Maybe...” That wasn’t magic, but I guess I don’t need to tell her that.
Anyway, if the Demon Overlord was dead, it was time to go home. There was still a lot I had to do.
“Hahahah... Splendid, hero!” And then, I heard another baritone voice echoing through the room.
“Th-The Demon Overlord?!”
“Humanity created light magic to defeat me. I’m surprised that anyone still knows how to use it.” I could hear the Demon Overlord’s voice clearly. Which meant I wasn’t imagining it. The Demon Overlord was still alive.
“But my power is far greater than this!” The lower half of the Demon Overlord’s body began to ripple and tremble. The ash on top of it blew away, and a new upper body formed. Now he had four eyes, with tiny little pupils giving off an evil light. His arms split into two at the elbow, and now there were twice as many forearms and huge claws. His newly grown scales had changed from green to gold. The old scales on the bottom half of his body fell away, and it became the same color as the top.
“Hey... Harissa... what’s that?”
“I... I... I don’t know! The records didn’t say anything about this!” Harissa fell flat on the ground again
“Did you think I did nothing during the centuries I was sealed away?” The golden dragon chuckled throatily. I could see sharp fangs when it opened its mouth.
“Your attacks cannot touch my second form.”
“What?! Seriously?!” If that was true, I was screwed. I was lucky even to win the first time.
The Demon Overlord gave a sadistic smile as he saw our shock.
“There were two things in the last battle I fought that defeated me. One was light magic. The other was the Hero’s Sword, which nullifies my magic. But after long, long years of research, I succeeded in replicating the power of the Hero’s Sword for my own use.”
“B-But that means...” Harissa shouted in despair.
“That means... what?!” I didn’t know what was going on, but I screamed, too.
The Demon Overlord grinned cruelly, its fangs peaking from its mouth.
“That means that the light magic you just used can’t affect my second form.”
“B-But then...” Harissa’s voice was shaking, and it sounded like she was about to start sobbing.
If magic wouldn’t work on him, that meant that a sorcerer like Harissa— no, she and probably everyone else in the world— had lost their one way to fight the Demon Overlord.
But instead of despair, I just felt mildly curious.
“Now despair, puny humans! Kneel before the manifestation of your destruc—”
“Take this!” I pulled the trigger on the laser gun before the Demon Overlord could finish his sentence.
“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” There was another scream, just like the one before, as the Demon Overlord turned to ash. The room became silent once more.
“Thought so.” I nodded, sure of my theory now.
“Huh?!” A moment later, Harissa screamed. She was as surprised as I’d ever seen anyone in my life.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-What’s goin’ on? How’d yer magic work on th’ Demon Overlord?”
“S-Stop shaking me. That was...” Just as I tried to explain, the Demon Overlord revived again.
This time, his lower half turned into something like a centaur, and his arms and legs had split into four. He was more than twice as tall as his last form, and his head brushed against the ceilin
g of the bedroom.
“What did you do?! Magic’s not supposed to work on me!”
“It’s simple. My gun isn’t magic. It’s science.” Alien science, to be precise.
“S-Science?!”
“Just die already!”
“GWAGGGHHHHH!” I was getting sick of talking to the Demon Overlord, anyway. Demon overlords usually rambled a lot.
But then he revived again. “Listen to m— GYAAAAAHH!”
“Are you really the her— UGWAAAHH!”
“Would you just— GWWWAAAHHHH!”
Give it up already. Damn.
“How many more forms do you have?”
“Do not think you can defeat me! With every transformation, my power grows! And I still have two more to go!”
“So I pull the trigger two more times then. Got it.”
“Wai— GOOWAAAHAHH!”
And so the Demon Overlord collapsed to the ground, burnt to a blackened crisp. He wasn’t lying about powering up. By the time I’d finished off his last form, instead of turning into ash, he’d turned into barbecued dragon meat. It smelled pretty good, actually.
There was a moment of awkwardness. Sure, if you grew up hearing tales of a legendary hero, seeing the Demon Overlord defeated like this was probably enough to crush your dreams. But at least I beat the guy, right? Right?
I’d learned something from this, too. If I’d only been caught up in Harissa’s story, I probably would’ve taken the Hero’s Sword and went on a journey to defeat the Demon Overlord. I would’ve gone to the tavern to recruit allies, and raised my sword and magic skills fighting random monsters before finally battling the Demon Overlord. But if I’d done that, I would’ve had a horrible time trying to handle the Demon Overlord’s second form, since magic wouldn’t work on it.
Instead, though, I’d been caught up in three stories at once. And that meant there was no need to care about the rules of any one particular story. That might help when I was dealing with Satsuki and Iris’s stories. I made sure to remember it.
“So... yeah, no point in hanging out here forever. Let’s go back to the castle.”
“R-Right...” Harissa nodded, but she seemed somehow unsatisfied by the fact that the strange power of science had so easily defeated Demon Overlord.
▽
We warped back to the castle study.
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 1 Page 6