by Ryota Hori
Gaius had summoned over 100 otherworlders over the years, and he’d seen countless reactions. Most otherworlders panicked. They would cry and beg and scream— which was to be expected. But none of those reactions had any power to them, and they were all equally apprehended by the soldiers and etched with the seal of servitude by Gaius.
Of course, some otherworlders realized the threat they were in and tried to attack Gaius and his soldiers, but they were still unarmed and incapable of facing armed opponents. It was a touch rougher, but in the end they were suppressed by the soldiers just the same, and forced to kneel before Gaius.
But the young man standing before him was different. Difficult to believe though it was, this otherworlder he’d summoned today had single-handedly slain four soldiers.
“A-As far as I know... No country... has that knowledge.” With countless doubts in his mind, Gaius answered the question.
Given their previous exchange, there was no reason Gaius would lie.
“So you know how to summon people to this world, but you can’t send them back. Why?” Ryoma asked, rubbing his chin.
“Th-That’s...”
That question prompted Gaius’s pulse to leap to the quickest pace it had gotten to up to this moment.
No good... What do I say? What can I say that would save my life?
Judging from Ryoma’s previous actions, Gaius realized perfectly well that he was dealing with a cruel, merciless man who spared no pity to his foes. And if he were to answer that question, this cold-hearted man would never let him live.
“Hmm.” Ryoma smiled, noticing Gaius’s fear of answering. “Looks like you really don’t want to answer that... Well, that’s fine. I’ll answer it for you, then.”
Those words made Gaius’s features distort with further fright and surprise. His heart felt like it was on the verge of bursting.
It can’t be... No, there is no way he could know. No way this person who has only just arrived from another world would... Oh, God... Meneos, God of light...
He prayed to his God, but that prayer would go unanswered. The words Ryoma spoke seemed as though they would cast him down into hell.
“The reason there’s no method to send otherworlders back to where they came from is because you never planned to let those you summoned leave alive, did you? There’s no point in sending back a corpse, so you never researched a method to do it, and no country has a method to do so. Is that it? C’mon, tell me. Am I wrong?”
“Y-You...”
Ryoma’s words were the equivalent of a death sentence signed by the grim reaper himself. It was the thing Gaius wanted to avoid saying at all costs, and he saw through it all.
‘Tis all hopeless now. If he knows this much... Nothing I say will prevent him from killing me.
He had quick enough wits to launch a preemptive attack on them, the combat prowess to beat four armed soldiers with his bare hands, and the cold-hearted nature to torture someone for information. To top it all off, he had the deductive ability to know exactly what to ask Gaius.
Such a fearsome man. If only we could put him to good use... Our empire would likely succeed in conquering the western continent.
That thought filled Gaius’s mind. And that could have very well come to pass. But the man standing before him completely and utterly antagonized the empire. He could see through why they summoned otherworlders, and what they saw them as.
Am I going to die here...? No! I mustn’t die here. The king’s dream, and mine, cannot be crushed here!
Gaius tried to compel his despairing heart. He supported O’ltormea because he shared the ideal of the emperor, who had tried to bring peace to this tumultuous world, and if he were to think of the sacrifices needed to achieve that, giving up here wasn’t an option.
Thankfully, my thaumaturgy is gradually healing my wounds. I’ll bide my time and wait for an opportune moment... That’s my only chance.
Since he had no way of sending this man back to his world, he would certainly never let Gaius live. He already knew that once this man had beaten all the information he needed out of him, his life would be unceremoniously ended.
This fool is lowering his guard, thinking me to be injured... So in the moment he resolves to kill me, I will...!
“Bullseye, huh... Well, that’s bad and a half.” In contrast to Gaius’s tragic internal struggle, Ryoma remained nonchalant.
Ryoma looked up and sighed. He could tell from the old man’s face that he wasn’t lying. He didn’t enjoy torture, and had only done it to ensure the old man wouldn’t lie, but alas, the result was the worst possible one. Even so, it still wasn’t enough.
If he had no way back, that opened a whole new array of questions he needed this old man to answer. And if Ryoma was to survive, he would get those answers out of the old man by any means necessary.
“What are you summoning people for? If you’re not intending to send otherworlders back, you must be using them as slaves or something, right?”
This question was yet another one Gaius hesitated to answer.
Again... He continues to ask these sorts of questions...
Ryoma watched Gaius’s expression closely.
No! This man already knows the answer. He’s testing to see if I’m lying... He’s only asking me to be sure!
Ryoma was only asking to ascertain if the answer he’d come up with, which he was ninety percent sure of, was the correct one. Gaius realized this when he peered into Ryoma’s unwavering eyes, and after a few moments of faltering, he eventually parted his lips to speak.
“We are making use of otherworlders such as yourself... to win a war.”
It was a terribly selfish reason, steeped in malice. They summoned humans from Earth and sent them out into the battlefield, regardless of their will. They were simply forced by Gaius to shed their blood in the name of the empire.
But even after hearing those words, Ryoma’s expression didn’t change. He simply asked for further confirmation of the facts.
“A war, huh... Can you explain that a bit more?” Ryoma turned his gaze towards the dead soldiers lying on the floor as he spoke. “As near as I can tell, your armored friends here seemed more used to fighting with swords and spears than most people in my world.”
In terms of skill, they were competent enough from what Ryoma could see. He’d gotten the jump on them and survived, but that was mostly thanks to luck being on his side. They were clad in armor, and were experienced in true combat. In other words, most people summoned into this room were far weaker than these soldiers.
“Plus, there’s no one back in my world who can shoot wind and lightning like you can, old man. Or are there, like, multiple other worlds, and you were trying to summon someone with those kinds of powers?”
These kinds of things were common in comics and cartoons, but as far as Ryoma knew, real people couldn’t pull that off.
“No. There are other worlds, but your world is the only other one populated by humans.”
So there was no chance of them reaching out into the wrong world. But that made things even weirder.
“Hmm. But summoning people from my world wouldn’t help you much in the war, would it? Why go to all that trouble?”
Maybe if they were pulling people from an age where knights and warriors existed, they could probably expect some fighting potential. Even commoners from that time weren’t detached from the reality of war, and were more accustomed to bloodshed in their everyday lives.
But if they were summoning from the present, there was no such advantage. Of course, war in itself still existed, but most weapons of the current age were firearms, and most weapons intended for close quarters combat were, at best, knives. If you were to order people of this age to fight with swords or spears, they wouldn’t be able to comply in the overwhelming majority of cases. Bows and arrows were hardly used, even for hunting. In which case, summoning people from Ryoma’s world seemed like a wasted effort.
In terms of efficiency, the chances of them
actually nabbing someone who’d be useful for their purposes are slim.
Which left one option; they had some kind of value Ryoma was unaware of, which made them worth using.
“That’s because you otherworlders have the potential to become the greatest warriors of this world.”
Answering that question was frankly dangerous. Letting Ryoma learn of this ran the risk of creating a terribly tricky monster for the empire. But Gaius still took that gamble, despite that danger. Holding his tongue would only get him killed.
“Greatest warriors... you say?” Ryoma’s expression took on a quizzical shade at Gaius’s words. “You’re saying untrained people could become the greatest warriors of this world?”
Gaius’s claim understandably made Ryoma tilt his head in confusion. There was no guarantee that whoever they summoned would be a practiced martial artist like Ryoma.
“Are the people you summon limited to some condition, like having a certain degree of power to them?”
That would explain things. But Gaius shook his head in denial.
“Whoever is summoned is decided by arbitrary luck and nothing else.”
Is this geezer lying through his teeth? Ryoma thought. No, that doesn’t seem likely, judging by the way he’s been behaving.
The chance of Gaius lying was slim, but that meant most of the people they summoned came here without any knowledge of combat. They came from an age without war, where martial arts existed only as part of culture. Very few people practiced martial arts in modern society as a means of actually fighting.
True enough, Ryoma practiced them as a tool for killing and keeping himself alive. He practiced in case a situation might arise where he would need them. But the grand majority of people weren’t like him. The average person would hesitate to kill an animal, let alone a fellow human being. So what meaning was there in summoning them to this world?
“Then what’s the point of summoning total amateurs from another world?”
Gaius nodded at Ryoma’s question. “In this world, when you kill another living being, you absorb a fraction of its life force. That is why we summon them.”
That was far too absurd and ridiculous an idea for Ryoma’s ears. Most people would scoff at it. But he simply stared at Gaius in silence.
Doesn’t seem like he’s lying. I mean, if he’d wanted to fib his way out of this, he’d think of a more convincing lie... But still, this is pretty far-fetched...
Gaius’s expression was entirely serious, and he didn’t appear to be lying. Had he intended to tell a lie in the first place, he’d likely think of a more believable one. But this was still an extremely difficult revelation to believe.
“The hell does that mean? You’re saying that I absorbed the power of those four mooks I just killed?”
“Precisely.” Gaius responded to Ryoma’s dubious expression with a nod.
Ryoma looked at his body, but nothing felt different. His arms weren’t thicker and his legs weren’t longer, so at least judging from outward appearances, he looked the same as ever.
“Sure doesn’t feel like it to me.”
“The lives of a few people do not amount to much.”
“You’re losing me.”
Killing people in order to absorb their life force... It was an inexplicable phenomenon Ryoma had never heard of before, so it was only natural he would have trouble understanding it immediately.
“To be exact, once you have killed one thousand people, you gain the equivalent strength of one person.”
While Gaius explained the additional prerequisites in place for this phenomenon, Ryoma felt aghast and astonished in his heart. Kill one thousand people to gain the equivalent strength of one person? What a gyp.
“Aren’t those pretty diminished returns? Doesn’t seem worth very much if you have to sacrifice that much for it.”
Ryoma’s exasperation was to be expected. It seemed like far too paltry a reward, considering the effort required to kill a thousand people.
“It depends on the conditions, and isn’t restricted to humans. If one were to slay a single dragon, he would likely gain power equal to that of a dozen people.”
Gaius kept talking, desperately trying to keep Ryoma occupied.
Just a little more! If I can just buy a little more time, the guards will surely come. They would grow suspicious of us not making contact for this long, and come to ask what has happened!
That was the last hope Gaius could cling to.
“Hmm. Well, I understand the whole power absorption thing, but still, why go to the trouble of summoning people from my world?”
“One reason is that your absorption efficiency is higher.”
“Huh?” Gaius’s words left Ryoma surprised again.
“In other words, if an otherworlder and a person from this world were to slay an equal number of creatures from the same species, there would be a noticeable difference in the amount of life force each absorbed.”
“I see.” Ryoma’s eyes narrowed. “So what you’re focusing on is the rate of their growth after you’ve summoned them... Even a person with no combat experience could eventually become stronger than the people in this world. So that’s why you’re choosing to groom otherworlders.”
There were likely other secrets at play here, but for now he mostly understood what he needed to know.
“I guess it’s time...” A faint whisper escaped Ryoma’s lips.
And then he directed a gaze that pierced as sharp as a needle at Gaius.
“Well, I don’t know how much of what you’ve said is true, but I’ll believe you for the time being...”
And after whispering that, Ryoma directed a vile smile at Gaius, who was squatting down on the floor.
“By the way, old man. Looks like your wounds are healing really quickly.”
Those words were spoken completely nonchalantly, but hearing them made Gaius feel like his spine had just turned to ice.
After being punched by Ryoma, Gaius had kept himself curled into the fetal position, and had been using a healing spell the whole time. And Ryoma had seen through it.
“Wha...!” Gaius cried out in surprise, and Ryoma simply sneered at him.
“I mean, of course I’d notice that. I broke your ribs hard enough to damage your lungs. You could hardly even speak given how much blood you were coughing up, but all of a sudden you started chattering away, loud and clear. Which means you’ve been healing yourself... while you were holding your stomach there on the floor.”
“Y-You! You knew that all along?”
Ryoma answered his question with a shrug of the shoulders.
“Why... Why?”
Why did you say nothing, and let me lay there and heal myself?
Ryoma simply gave an icy smile in response to Gaius’ words. “Why didn’t I say anything, you ask? Because I figured you’d keep flapping your tongue, thinking it would buy you time. Besides, you were waiting for me to show an opening, weren’t you?”
“D-Damn you! You let me do as I wished despite knowing that much?!”
Gaius raised his voice in outrage. That was on a level beyond trickery or cunning. To Gaius, the figure of Ryoma smiling down on him could be seen as nothing other than the human incarnation of the devil himself.
“Is it really that surprising? Well, if you were really looking for me to screw up and give you an opening to attack, you were better off pretending to be injured. Poor call of judgment there, old man.”
Saying that, Ryoma clenched his baseball mitt-sized hand into a rock-like fist.
“But never mind that. I get the gist of what you’ve told me, at least. I don’t know how much of your story is true, but if nothing else, it doesn’t look like I’m going back home for the time being...”
Such was his last warning. Ryoma’s lips curled into a mocking smile, proclaiming he had no more use for Gaius. Seeing that smile, the old man instinctively backed away. His fear of Ryoma spurred his body to move.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t do anyt
hing reckless if I were you. After all, I have to thank you for all the information you gave me. I’ll grant you a painless death. You’ve been a great help, so I think that’s a fair trade. Well? What do you say?”
That was the kindness Ryoma Mikoshiba directed towards Gaius, the man who had abducted him. But that kindness didn’t register as such to Gaius. Realizing Ryoma’s intentions, he took his final gamble. Now would be his only chance to come out on top. No matter how close to zero that probability may have been, he would have to take it.
“Spirits of wi—Kagh?!”
Gaius’s incantation was cut short by Ryoma thrusting a spearhand against his throat.
“What did I just tell you?” Ryoma told Gaius as he toppled down to the floor, looking down on him with emotionless eyes.
And then, Ryoma mercilessly delivered the finishing blow, a low kick that sank into the back of Gaius’s head. A sound like that of a watermelon being crushed resounded through the room.
“You shouldn’t have done anything reckless.”
And those whispered words were the last thing Gaius Valkland ever heard, as he was stomped upon and killed like an insect.
“Everything you said pissed me off. You were one seriously disgusting bastard...”
Ryoma spoke to Gaius’s corpse lying at his feet, and then mercilessly kicked it as hard as he could, sending it flying three meters away. It was the kind of anger Ryoma never showed on his face while Gaius was alive, but now it appeared all too clearly on his features. He had the expression of an enraged demon.
Anger can cloud one’s judgment. Losing oneself to anger in the middle of a battle is akin to just asking the opponent to kill you. Having had that lesson beaten into him by training, he was naturally capable of keeping his cool. But that was nothing more than a feat of temporary patience.
Ryoma was no saint, but a simple human being; he was as susceptible to anger as anyone else. Especially in this kind of situation. So Ryoma had kept it bottled up and hidden in his heart until the moment his opponent had breathed their last.
Gaius and his underlings had likely been summoning people into this world since long before they called Ryoma here, and he could only imagine the results of that... How many people were called into this world only to die, wallowing in despair? Those people must have had hopes and dreams of their own.