by Ao Jyumonji
That was right. They were saved. For now, at least.
I have an idea, Lala had said. If that was true, they had some hope at least.
Haruhiro looked to his comrades. Every one of them, without exception, was covered in sweat and snot, caked with dirt and dust, and was an exhausted mess. That they were still alive like this, and they weren’t even injured that badly, was kind of hard to believe. He was so relieved, his strength almost gave out on him.
—No. Don’t let your guard down. Not yet. We’re just getting started. We have to live. Live on. Survive. All of us together. What can I do to make that happen? What should I do? Follow Lala and Nono. I have no other plan, so that’s all I can do right now. Just stay cautious, don’t do anything I shouldn’t, and conserve stamina as much as possible. We’re running right now, but we’re only going at double time. Nono is carrying Shihoru, so we’re more than able to keep up.
Lala occasionally stopped and crouched down, signaling for the others to get low to the ground, as well. Nono immediately obeyed her, of course, and Haruhiro and the others followed his example.
Lala must have either had really good eyes, or an incredible sense for danger. Even when the enemies were pretty far off, she detected them first and tried to avoid them. To keep the enemies from finding them, they avoided elevated terrain, choosing lower spots to travel along. Once Shihoru was able to walk on her own again, they started ambushing cultist groups and wiping them out whenever they outnumbered them.
There was no idle chatter. When they made it through the lowlands and ran straight into a group of cultists and white giants, Ranta opened his mouth wide and shouted, “Whoa!” for the first time in a while.
Lala chose to flee without fighting. Fair enough; while there were fewer than ten cultists, the white giant was a threat, even if it was only in the four-meter class.
Lala and Nono kept picking up the pace. Did they plan to use Haruhiro’s party as bait while they escaped on their own? He couldn’t even get mad about it. To those two, Haruhiro and the others must have just been insurance in case things went wrong. He’d thought that from the beginning.
But it wasn’t like Haruhiro hadn’t been thinking at all.
“Lala-san, I have an idea!” he called.
For a moment, Lala turned back. There was no response.
If you’re going, go, he thought. I don’t mind. He was grateful to Lala and Nono. Thanks to the two of them, they had found time to catch their breath. Even if the two abandoned them now, they’d manage. At the very least, they’d struggle to the bitter end. He’d recovered enough that he could think that way.
“This way! Come on!” Haruhiro called. “Everyone, follow me! Keep trying!”
When Haruhiro changed course, Lala turned back again. She might be having trouble deciding.
Do what you want, he thought. He had been keeping a careful eye on their present location on the way here. If Haruhiro hadn’t gotten it wrong, this should be the right place.
“Damn those two!” Ranta spat.
Lala and Nono had vanished out of sight. They really had run off, huh? It wasn’t like that didn’t disappoint him.
“Don’t let it bug you!” Haruhiro called. “It’s fine! Leave it to me!”
“That doesn’t sound like you at all, Parupiro! You don’t say things like that!”
Oh, shut up. I know that much. He pisses me off. But, well, it’s Ranta. That’s nothing new. Like always, don’t worry about what’s done. Focus on now. Pour everything into this moment. I’m gonna live. Here, in the now.
Run along the easy paths, where it isn’t too uneven, and just don’t get my directions wrong. Everyone’s keeping up. Shihoru looks like she’s having a hard time, though. Keep going. Seriously, keep going. We’re almost there. We got lucky. It’s not far now.
“I get it!” On their left-hand side, on an elevated spot that was like an embankment, Lala and Nono suddenly appeared. “So, that’s what you’re doing! If it works, I’ll praise you for it!”
Had they not run away after all? Haruhiro grinned at Lala.
They ran for their lives, the cultists and white giant trailing behind them. There were a lot of ups and downs here, and they couldn’t see far ahead.
“Whaa...?!” Yume shouted. It looked like she’d figured it out.
The ground leveled out and their field of vision opened up.
Haruhiro spread his arms wide and went left. “Spread out! Don’t step on them!”
There were nets with grass over top of them, but if you looked closely, it didn’t take long to figure out what they were. They were far from perfect, but if you knew nothing about them, they might be surprisingly hard to notice.
It wasn’t long before he heard a falling sound behind him. When he turned back, one cultist had fallen right into a pit trap. There was a dip in the net and grass was dancing through the air.
Haruhiro, Kuzaku, and Merry were running on the left side of the hole, while Ranta, Yume, and Shihoru were on the right. One more cultist charged over the pit trap and fell in. The other cultists stood there, unable to move. The white giant might have tried to stop, but it was too late, because it pitched forward and fell in.
They hadn’t been of any use in the attempt to defeat the hydra or giant god, but he was glad they’d dug them. Of course, that was only in hindsight. They’d gotten lucky. That really was all there was to it.
Good or bad luck could be the difference between life and death. By a small but decisive margin, Haruhiro and his party were still on this side. The side of the living.
The cultists who hadn’t fallen into the pit were having a hard time deciding whether to pursue Haruhiro and the party, or what to do. Meanwhile, Haruhiro and the others ran as fast as they could, without hesitation, trying to put more distance between them.
By the time the cultists were out of sight, Lala and Nono were in front of Haruhiro. They were unbelievable. But Lala said she had an idea. They were planning to use him, so Haruhiro had every intention of using them, too.
“Weren’t you supposed to praise me?!” he called.
“Try asking again in a hundred years!” Lala yelled.
So that was how it was gonna be, huh. She was acting every bit like the dominatrix she looked like, that Lala. Seriously, she was unbelievable.
Regardless, the other pit traps were far away, so they couldn’t reuse the same trick. Haruhiro ended up spending time with his stomach hurting again. While it felt like they were gradually seeing fewer enemies, they couldn’t let their guard down. When Ranta started yakking about stupid nonsense, he was noisy and annoying and that only caused more stress.
When Lala occasionally took a break, she would have Nono get down on all fours and use him as a chair. That would be fine on its own, but she made a point of crossing and uncrossing her legs, then posing in ways that accentuated her bust, so it was tempting to look. It wasn’t like he really, really wanted to see, but he couldn’t help it, you know?
But what kind of relationship did Lala and Nono have...?
He didn’t have the courage to ask, and there were other things he’d rather know first. Like where they were going.
He tried asking, but Lala wouldn’t tell him. It looked like he’d just have to keep quiet and follow her.
Preparing himself for the worst, Haruhiro did just that. Lala and Nono made no attempt to run now. They walked. They walked, and walked, and boy did they walk.
Haruhiro and the party didn’t have a timepiece. Lala would sometimes pull out a pocket watch during breaks. When he asked the time, she answered, “And what good would knowing that do for you?” So, while he didn’t know the precise time, he thought they had probably been walking for more than a full day.
They were in a place that seemed similar to the valley where the volunteer soldier settlement had been set up. However, there was no spring at the bottom of this valley. No plants, either. It was a small, dry valley from the looks of it.
“We’ve walked around
the Dusk Realm a fair bit,” Lala said in a lilting, singsong voice as she descended the slope. “We’ve found a wide variety of different things. We sold most of that information, but we haven’t told anyone about this place. The truly fascinating discoveries we keep to ourselves, you see. Only we know about them. Isn’t that lovely?”
Every hair on Haruhiro’s body stood on end. Lala and Nono might suddenly bare their fangs and try to kill Haruhiro and the party. That was the sense he got. Was it an unfounded worry?
Lala and Nono descended into the valley, seemingly unconcerned. However, it couldn’t hurt to stay on guard.
When Haruhiro slowed his pace, his comrades seemed to notice and matched him. But when they reached the valley floor and saw what was there, all of that was blown away.
Beneath an outcropping that was like the overhang of a roof, there was an open maw. Thanks to that, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it without descending to the valley floor.
It’s a hole.
I’m sure it’s not just any cave. What gave me that impression, though?
Haruhiro quickly realized the answer to that. It was the initial hill.
It had a similar atmosphere or appearance as the initial hill—no, what the initial hill had once been. It was gone now. But this was just like that hole, the exit.
Lala and Nono entered the hole without stopping.
Haruhiro and Ranta looked at one another. Ranta looked dumbfounded.
Haruhiro had a sleepy look in his eyes, no doubt.
“...Do you know what I’m thinking?” Ranta asked.
“No, I don’t,” Haruhiro said immediately. “I have no idea what goes on inside your head. I’m pretty sure it’d be bad news if I did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“Exactly what he said...” Shihoru took a deep breath. “Do you think this carries through back home?”
“Fweh?!” Yume’s eyes went wide and she let out a weird cry. “Curryru?! Where’s that?!”
“There’s no place called that, moron!” Ranta screamed. “Carryru, really! What the heck’s Carryru supposed to be?!”
“If you say Curryru, it’s gotta be curry roux, y’know?” Yume said. “Huh? What’s curry, again...?”
“It’s spicy...” Merry tilted her head to the side in thought. “...I think? I recall it was... food?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kuzaku mumbled. “There was something like that, wasn’t there? It was kind of brown... Brown...?”
“...It was.” Haruhiro nodded. He was watering at the mouth. The words Shima had whispered came back to him.
“We’re searching for a way back to our original world.”
Their original world.
He looked to the hole, then up to the many-colored sky.
We need to get back.
Haruhiro looked around at his comrades. Their faces were all filthy. It was kind of comical.
“Let’s go,” he said.
No one objected.
They walked into the hole single-file, with Haruhiro, Kuzaku, Merry, Yume, Shihoru, and Ranta as their marching order. It was pitch-black inside the hole. But there was light up ahead.
Lala and Nono were waiting for them. The light source was the lantern that Nono was carrying. Lala just smiled slightly, walking forward without a word. It was a meandering path. It wasn’t steep, but it was on a downwards incline. They could feel a breeze. The air was flowing towards the valley they had come in from.
It’s the same, thought Haruhiro. Not just similar, but the same.
The path eventually straightened out. It wasn’t going down anymore, either. It was level.
“We discovered the gremlins years ago,” Lala suddenly said in a singsong voice. “We kept them a secret, though. But you guys found them, too, so we figured, well, okay. By the way, that wasn’t the first place we encountered the gremlins.”
“Huh...?” Haruhiro stopped walking despite himself. “It wasn’t... there?”
“Right,” she said. “They’re very weak creatures. They breed fairly quickly, but they aren’t aggressive, and they lack the power to fight back against predators. But they have a strange power, or a trait, and they’re stubborn survivors. That’s our hypothesis.”
Lala and Nono didn’t stop walking. Haruhiro hurriedly followed after them.
The path went on. There was a weak light up ahead. He could hear a rustling noise.
“They have the power to cross from one world to another,” Lala said. “Or the power to find the seams between them. Either that, or the tendency to find and flee into them.”
There. They were there. In the rock walls, there were countless holes large and small, and a bluish light shone out from inside them. They would be in those holes, or hanging from the edge of those holes, talking incessantly.
The nest. These were their homes. The ri-komo—no, the Gremlin Flats.
“But this is it.” Lala turned back and puffed up her chest with pride. “This is as far as we’ve explored.”
“Huh?” Haruhiro was so overwhelmed by the seemingly proud Lala that he took a half-step backwards. “W-Well then, do you know what kind of world this leads to, maybe...?”
“No clue,” Lala said with a broad smile. “It’s a total mystery.”
Afterword
In the afterword for each volume of Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, I’ve usually ended up writing about video games, but I think I’ll do something a little different this time.
As has already been announced, this novel will be receiving an anime adaptation.
I hadn’t anticipated this at all, and honestly, when my editor, Mr. K, first told me it might be happening, I laughed it off as unlikely. I was sure that the project would just up and vanish. Even after meeting Director Ryosuke Nakamura, as well as Mieko Hosoi-san and all of the producers, I was still half in doubt.
When I read the script, it was very entertaining, and I admired what they had done. “Why, this Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, it’s quite an impressive story. I wonder who wrote the original work. Oh, I did? Are you sure?” That was how disconnected I felt from it all. It just didn’t feel real.
It’s Mr. K and Mr. H of the editing department that deal directly with the anime production staff, so, in a way, it’s like everything’s happening off somewhere far away. It’s hard for it to sink in. There was a lot of actual work involved for me, including checks and adjustments, as well as giving my opinion on things. Though I never calmed down, I was relatively clear-headed about it all. But, you know, I just couldn’t calm down about it, and I still can’t.
This project came about because someone liked the novel and wanted to make an anime of it, so I am, of course, grateful for and happy about that. In the process of meeting the production team directly and speaking with them a number of times, I saw the passion and the seriousness with which they approached the work. I was surprised and overwhelmed by how deeply and with how much detail they thought about everything, and I was sincerely pleased by the fact that the thing they were creating was based on my own original work.
There are many people involved in the production of an anime, and a lot of money changes hands. It’s on a completely different scale from a novel. Obviously, they aren’t just doing all of this for their own entertainment, so I’m hoping it’s a success for them.
This is all just a matter of my own mentality, but one day I noticed I was watching the anime of Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash from a surprisingly objective perspective.
Why is that? I wondered. I quickly found my answer.
Fundamentally, I am the kind of person who, even when it isn’t going well, and he is feeling pain and loneliness, can be happy so long as he is writing novels. I think being a novelist is truly my calling. But does it absolutely have to be novels? I don’t think it does.
What I enjoy is imagining this or that in my head, and then capturing it in some form. Whether that’s as manga, movies, pictures, music, I think anything would probably do.
However, if
you have a pen and paper, or even just a PC these days, you can write. What’s more, you can do it by yourself, no help from others needed. That’s an important point.
I want to do everything by myself. I want to create something that’s purely my own.
Well, I’m sure there are people who do it all by themselves with manga, but it’s not as easy as with a novel. As for pictures, if there had been something that gave me the impetus to do it, I might have worked with them. I tried music, or songs rather, but I hated the sound of my own voice. With my voice, my songs wouldn’t turn out the way I was imagining them. There’s no helping that.
Due to various factors, I ended up choosing novels, which I could begin and complete entirely by myself. By the way, even with novels, when you think about the publication of the book, there are the editor and designers, the proofreaders, and the illustrator involved, as well. However, the first draft, I believe, belongs entirely to the novelist.
That’s why I do as little to change my first draft as possible. Almost the only time I make corrections is when my editor or the proofreaders note a mistake or something contradictory and I feel there is a valid need to. My novels are mine and mine alone, and that’s why I love being a novelist.
Because of that, I am very grateful to those who make my novels into books for me. I pay great respect to the talents of those men and women.
It’s true that the anime for Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is based on my novel, but naturally, it is not my novel. It’s something that Director Nakamura and many other people have worked together to create. It’s absolutely not mine. If the anime turns out to be something wonderful, that achievement belongs to the people who created it. I only provided the original source materials. The anime is entirely their work.
I have ended up in a position where I can, directly and indirectly, see the incredible labor they put in, the skills they’ve developed, and the rare sense of taste that they have put to use in creating anime. I am the person with the greatest expectations for the anime Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, and also one of the people looking forward to it.
If my novel were not the original work, I wouldn’t have had the chance to have these expectations and anticipation for it. That is a fact. In a broad sense, that may be because I am one of the creators. If there’s anything I can do to make the anime a success, I will gladly do it. But, really, I’m a novelist, and the anime is not my novel. It’s because I’ve drawn a firm distinction between the two in my mind that I’m able to wait for the anime with great expectations, and to look forward to it.