Surviving as a Broken Hero

If we didn’t get out soon, we would probably be found.

After all, it was easy enough to walk around with cloaks while the demons were distracted with dealing with a perceived attack, but we would probably fall under suspicion once they actually started searching the camp.

“We don’t have time for this,” Koise said, glancing anxiously toward where we could feel the demonic energy that still hadn’t moved.

Whatever was emitting the demonic energy hadn’t reacted to Koise’s distraction, and that, at least, was good for us. It meant there would be fewer demons in our way.

I briefly took in the circular structure in front of the cages, the large gate entrance, and the caged beasts in the area.

Rhil was the only humanoid among the caged creatures, which consisted of wolves, goblins, bears, and a few odd monsters that I was guessing came from random dungeons—there was even a rock troll bound up with chains in one of the cages with hardly enough room to breathe.

It was pretty clearly the entrance to a fighting arena. It looked like even demons craved entertainment.

“Go on ahead, I’m going to create a distraction.”

“That wasn’t the plan. You can feel the energy that being is radiating, right?”

I could. The sickly aura pulled at me from across the camp, and if I listened closely, I swore that I could even hear a faint whisper in the back of my head.

If the being was really on par with the dragon, I wasn’t confident in our chances of confronting it with just the two of us and no trump card like we had with the dragon.

‘The more help the better, right?’

“Then help me open up these cages!” I said, moving into action and heading straight for Rhil’s cage. She was still slumped against the bars, but she turned her head when she heard me raise my voice.

I didn’t leave it up to discussion, and Koise took the hint, heading straight for the troll’s cage. It looked like he wanted to maximize the amount of help we would get from releasing the creatures, as a wolf probably wouldn’t have warranted more than a questioning look before the demons killed it.

“Huh…? Aizen?”

She barely had the strength to even turn her head to look at me, and the scratches and bruises on her skin looked fresh.

Judging by the lightning we had seen and the thunder we had heard not long beforehand, she had probably just finished fighting something in the arena.

“Rhil, let’s get you out of this thing. Sit tight a moment.”

I pulled on the chained lock around the cage’s door and strained the muscles in my body as I lifted a leg and placed my foot against the cage for support, using all the strength in my body.

The chains strained against each other, the links letting out creaks of protest. The metal dug into my hands, pressing against the bones of my fingers and stretching my tendons.

‘Just a little… more…’

I exhaled all of my breath and lifted my other leg up, pulling with everything I had until…

—Snap!

The weakest link broke, and metal whipped past my face while I fell to the powdery snow that puffed up on impact.

The cage door creaked open and Rhil took a few unsteady steps, her bare feet scuffing against the frozen dirt and through the snow as she took a few unsteady steps and fell onto a knee.

I sat up and looked at her. She reached for the collar around her neck, faint lines of electricity crackling over it.

“Aizen, the collar…”

She clawed at the obsidian-like collar that was chafing the skin around her neck to the point that there was a visible red ring.

I couldn’t just break the collar as I had broken the chain unless I wanted to risk seriously injuring her, which was the last thing I wanted to do after seeing her for the first time since she had vanished back in Karfana.

I had never seen anything quite like it. The collar looked like it was absorbing her mana whenever she tried to use an ability, making it impossible for her to access her System powers.

‘But she should still be enhanced by her attributes, right?’

Even if that was the case, she was closer to a mage-type class than a fighter one. People usually picked attributes that assisted with their abilities. Whereas Strength increased the damage I would do by making me physically stronger to complement my physically demanding abilities, she had probably focused more on Mana or Magic to enhance her lightning capabilities.

If that was the case, she was probably only slightly stronger than a normal human if she couldn’t use her abilities.

I knelt next to her and glanced at the collar while I heard the sound of roaring as Koise somehow severed the chains around the troll’s cage and let it loose.

The troll, despite usually being looked upon as a barbaric species that attacked almost any other non-trolls it saw, ignored us and let out a roar.

It charged off into the enemy camp, likely looking to enact revenge against its captors.

Koise ran over to us.

“Are you finished? We have to move. Now.”

“Can you get this thing off of her?” I asked.

He looked down and noticed the collar that Rhil was gripping onto.

“Don’t bother, we need the key,” Rhil croaked out and grimaced, standing up.

I could guess who had the key.

“Aizen—”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

We began moving toward the demonic energy again on the east side of the camp while the troll wreaked havoc, tossing demons about through the air and wrecking their flimsy tents.

The demonic energy still hadn’t moved.

With Rhil in tow, it wasn’t about stealth anymore. We just had to move as quickly as we could before the demons dealt with the troll and turned their notice back to us.

The building with the demonic energy coming from turned out to be a single-floor wooden structure in the middle of a clearing of tents.

Stealth was long out of the picture by then, and whatever was in the wooden building likely already knew we were coming. The real question was why they hadn’t moved yet.

Koise and I looked at each other from either side of the solid-looking wooden door set in the center of the building’s wall. The structure had no windows to speak of.

Rhil stood to the side behind us.

Koise and I looked at each other and nodded. I ran at the door, pulling my fist back, judging that using the mana for a «Strike» wouldn’t be necessary.

Then, right as I swung my first forward…

—Creak.

The door swung open, accompanied by the creaking of rusty hinges.

I stumbled in and caught my footing before sound warped around me and I felt the stuffy, sick aura of demonic energy pressing down on me thicker than I had ever felt it.

“So you’re the one who killed the dragon.”

What greeted me was the rustic interior of what looked almost like what I would have imagined the interior of a captain’s quarters on a ship to look like.

A bear’s pelt was spread along the floor in front of me, two chairs of sturdy wooden build planted before a wide desk that took over a large portion of the last third of the room.

Bookshelves against the walls gave the room a quiet, studious air, and maps with various pins and markings covered the walls around the room.

Behind the document-strewn desk sat what, at first glance, looked to be an elf with cracked, flaking skin.

Black veins ran underneath skin that was as pale as snow, and his gray hair was visibly brittle, with split ends extending down to his shoulders.

Green eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light cast by the candle-lit chandelier hanging from the ceiling watched me, and he sat in a relaxed pose, one leg crossed over the other, his chin resting against her hand and his elbow on the armrest of the luxurious-looking red leather chair he sat in.

I squinted my eyes, not quite believing what I was seeing in front of me.

‘Is that…?’

Sitting across from me behind the desk was a familiar face that I hadn’t seen since Karfana.

Last I had seen him, in fact, he had been tasked with heading back to the capital to warn them of the demonic invasion.

It was Alikr, the elf who I had known for years to be the Association representative of Karfana.

I’d frequently shared conversations, thoughts, and information with the elf, and I remembered his calm attitude even when Awakeners pressed him for better quests or tried subtle threats on him.

He had never shown any inclination that I could think of toward evil or being a demon infiltrator. Did that mean it was a recent development? If that was the case, how could he have become a captain so soon?

No, that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have been able to corrupt the dragon in just the short time from Karfana to me seeing him within that building.

‘What on earth is going on?’

A numbness overtook me, and I realized that he had to have also been the one in charge of detaining Rhil and making her fight, or he had at least been aware of it.