Slayers volume 9, p.10
Slayers, Volume 9, page 10
Actually... my dark blade was digging into the black claw, but the claw was regenerating as fast as I cut it! There’s no way to break through! Desperation welled inside me. I couldn’t pump my spell’s output in this position, and the Ragna Blade rapidly sapped my magic to fuel its high destructive power.
This is a battle of attrition. Sooner or later, my black blade will be extinguished and the claw will...
Just as I was imagining my own unfortunate end...
“Ruby-Eye Blade!” Luke shouted, and I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye. It was a sword... of red light!
Huh?!
Krk! My black blade and Luke’s ruby razor now had the hyperdemon’s claw pincered! It could bear the pressure from both sides for only an instant, and then...
Zinnng! An ear-splitting peal rang out, and the claw snapped.
“Hraaaaaaaagh!” the hyperdemon cried its last.
“Hey! The demon...” I gasped.
“It’s collapsing?!” Gourry and Luke both shouted in shock.
Indeed, the hyperdemon capable even of regenerating from a Dragon Slave began to fall apart before our eyes.
The swarm of weakly writhing tentacles eventually dropped to the ground, turned to parched earth, and disintegrated. The legs supporting the body snapped, hitting the ground with a series of thunderous tremors. The body met the same fate. All that was left in the end was a large pile of dust, and the uncertain whispers of the townspeople around us.
“Hey, Lina. What the heck just happened?” Gourry asked after the hyperdemon’s body had crumbled without a trace. Luke and Mileena also stared at me in silence, their expressions asking the same question.
Hmm... where to start, though?
“As I’m sure you can imagine, that giant monster used to be the black cloak named Galva. A demonic curse transformed him,” I said after some thought. “But that wasn’t all. He was simultaneously possessed by a demon. That gave him both extreme regenerative abilities and extreme magic resistance. The only way to stop him was to destroy the demon who cast the curse, and while I was wondering where that demon might be, I thought... ‘You know, maybe it’s the same demon that possessed him.’”
“An’ what’s your basis for that?” Luke asked, sounding fed up.
“Well, it was pretty clear from what we saw in the cave that the black sword was what turned him into a demon. That suggested the demon who cast the curse on the guy, the demon that fused with him, and the black sword itself were all one and the same.”
“The sword was... a demon?” Luke said with a scowl.
I nodded firmly. “Pure demons are spiritual beings, so they can more or less take whatever form they want. Gourry and I have fought plenty with weird forms in the past. One was even a single demon manifested as a pair of floating orbs. So a demon taking the form of a sword to try to lure in treasure-seekers didn’t seem too far-fetched.” I hadn’t told Luke and Mileena, but the Sword of Light that Gourry once carried was apparently a high-ranking demon from another world as well. “Anyway, when I saw that hulking thing coming at us, I realized something. Out of all its tentacles, only one had a claw attached. That made me think it might be the core of the fused demon.”
“And... I guess you were right?” Luke asked.
I nodded again. “Yeah. Though if I’d been wrong, it would’ve been time to run for the hills. That’s basically it. You following all this, Gourry?”
“Nope.”
Argh.
“But we beat it, and that’s what matters, right?”
Why did you ask for an explanation then?! I managed to recover my cool, then turned to Luke. “But hey, you did a pretty good job back there. Using the power of Ruby-Eye to summon a red sword of pure magic power... I’ve never seen a spell like that before.”
“Indeed, I haven’t either,” came a voice from some distance away.
The four of us whipped around at once. A small, porcelain hand was reaching into the dust that had once been the hyperdemon’s body. It reemerged holding the hilt of the black sword from the mine.
“You!” Luke shouted angrily when he saw the figure responsible.
“Yes, yes, congratulations on your achievement. I never expected to get the better of Lina Inverse easily, but I’ll admit I was surprised by your competence as well, Master Luke,” Sherra said with a bright smile, playing with the sword hilt in one hand. She was no longer dressed like your average townsperson. Instead, she now donned a costume like a high priest’s vestments, modified for ease of movement. But unlike typical priest garb, her robes were jet black. They were also adorned with patches of silver embroidery that was either purely decorative or writing in some unknown language—I wasn’t sure.
“You were behind all of this. The sword, the demons...” I muttered.
“Precisely,” Sherra replied cheerfully. “I started the rumors about the sword as well. Dear old Glen, that silly old man... He was incredibly useful to me. I let him think I was his daughter, which allowed me to make that place my center of operations. He even spread rumors of the sword for me too.”
“I see... That’s why you didn’t need money to live on. But no one believed the ramblings of a drunk old man. So you got impatient and started generating large numbers of demidemons...”
“Bingo. Then the rumors spread far and wide. Still, I never expected the great Lina Inverse to get involved.”
“Hey... you know what Sherra really is?” Luke asked.
“I think I have an idea,” I responded.
“Don’t worry, my dear Mistress Lina. I’ll introduce myself,” Sherra said with an almost sarcastic bow, cutting me off. “It’s exactly as she suspects. My true name is indeed Sherra. I was born in the Kataart Mountains.” Her smile widened. “It might not be obvious at a glance, but I am a full-fledged demon.”
“What?!” Luke and Mileena cried out in unison, understandably shocked by this declaration.
“So, what exactly is your big plan?” I asked her. “Judging by what you said earlier, you wanted to split us up and lure us to the sword one at a time. Slipping out of the inn at night, wandering off, and letting yourself get captured by the men in black was a ploy to split us up, wasn’t it? I can’t believe you thought that would work.”
“O-Oh, shut up! I never thought you’d reach the mine so quickly!”
“I don’t think your final goal was creating that hyperdemon either. If we take what you said to its logical conclusion... it seems like we caught you with your pants down, and you demonified Galva in a fit of pique, yeah?”
“I told you to shut up!” The sheer irritation in her voice suggested I’d hit the nail on the head. Either her plan had gotten busted, or she just had a short fuse...
“Well, I don’t know what you were plotting, but now that the sword is broken, I guess it’s all up in smoke,” I said with a shrug.
At this, a grin appeared on Sherra’s face. “Is it, though? This sword is a demon I’ve created, and it’s also my weapon. Therefore...”
She gave the hilt a light swing, and then... a new black blade sprouted from the guard!
“What?!” we all cried out in unison.
“...I can do this with it,” she said, and took a practiced fighting stance.
But even if it was with the assistance of a Raugnut Rushavna curse, she’d produced a demon capable of blocking my Ragna Blade... which meant...
“Sherra... you’re not just any demon, are you?” I asked.
A beaming smile crossed her face. “Indeed. Perhaps introducing myself this way would make it clearest... I am Sherra, General of the Dynast.”
“What?!” Her words took my breath away. The General of the Dynast?!
“The what?” Luke asked.
“A high-ranked demon in service to Dynast, one of the five servants of Dark Lord Ruby-Eye Shabranigdu,” I managed to explain.
I had once met the Priest and General of the Dragon, servants to Chaos Dragon Gaav—a peer of Dynast’s. I also happened to know Greater Beast’s Priest. I won’t mince words here; beings like them were absurdly strong. If Sherra, General of the Dynast, was on the same level... then even with a four-on-one advantage, we stood little to no chance of winning. Even if we decided to make a break for it, escape seemed unlikely.
And that meant... we’d just have to get her to withdraw!
“I can’t believe it,” I said, dramatically pointing at Sherra.
“What? The way I tricked you, you mean? Or how I crushed this pathetic little city? Or was it something more silly and sentimental, like how I turned that man into a demon?” She spoke with a confident smile, fully assured of her own superiority.
But I wasn’t rattled in the slightest. “None of all that. I can’t believe... Dynast Graushera named his subordinate Sherra?! That kind of cheap naming scheme is absolutely appalling!”
Krrrrk! At my words, Sherra froze up completely.
“What? Don’t... Don’t be ridiculous! Lord Dynast gave me this name himself! It... It must have a noble lineage!”
Oho? She seems a bit shaken by that. Let’s keep poking! “Don’t tell me, Sherra... Is your counterpart—you know, the Priest of the Dynast—named Grau or Glao or something like that?”
I saw her face twitch, and then she completely froze up. Wait... you’re kidding me. Is that really the Priest’s name? What’s your damage, Dynast?!
“R-Regardless! It may sound silly to humans like you, but Lord Dynast surely gave it a great deal of thought! Surely...”
“You don’t sound so sure. Why don’t you go ask Dynast about it? I bet he’ll start laughing and say, ‘I didn’t have a lot of ideas, so I just named you the first thing that came to mind. Hahaha.’”
“H-He would never! I’m sure it’s an ancient and noble name!”
“And you know this... how?”
“Ngh!” In obvious frustration, Sherra gritted her teeth and pointed her sword at me. “Very well... This isn’t over! I shall depart for now, but the next time we meet, I’ll know the origin of my name!”
Not the greatest parting line I’d ever heard, but hey. Sherra then blinked into the darkness and was gone.
Hoo boy... There she goes.
“Well... pure demons are spiritual beings, so I guess they’re weak to psychological warfare...” I whispered.
“That’s how demons work, huh?” Luke asked, eyes narrowed.
Epilogue
“Well, take care.” Gourry and I said our goodbyes to Luke and Mileena the next day.
“Guess we both ended up empty-handed,” Luke said with a strained smile. “But lemme tell you somethin’, okay? If we end up in another fight with you somewhere, someday, over some treasure, we ain’t holdin’ back.”
“Noted.”
“Well... take care an’ all yerselves.”
“Don’t do anything to drive Mileena off, you hear?”
“H-Hey! Shut up!” Luke’s face turned bright red at my comment, and he swiftly turned his back on me. “A-Anyway... So long for now! Let’s go, Mileena!”
“Farewell.” She cast me a small smile, and began following after Luke.
“Sheesh... At least things have calmed down a bit,” Gourry said—a line that was positively braindead in its casualness—around the time the departing couple were about the size of ants to our eyes.
“Hahh...” I let out a deep sigh. “Tell me, Gourry. How exactly have things ‘calmed down a bit’?”
“Huh?” Gourry gazed into the distance for a while, thinking, then said, “Now that you mention it... I guess we haven’t resolved much of anything, huh?”
“Precisely. We made a demon go splat, then scared Sherra off... But we never actually learned who those men in black were. That Zain guy disappeared on us too, and we didn’t even get a sword out of it all. Still, there’s one thing that’s really weighing on me: what was Sherra after? Her intelligence and personality notwithstanding, I’m concerned that a General’s mixed up in all this... And for some reason, she’s taking the form of a human girl to run her little scheme. I’m not sure exactly what said scheme is, but I suspect Hellmaster’s death has something to do with it.”
“Huh.”
Don’t just say “huh”! This lug still didn’t understand what was going on here... Granted, I couldn’t really speak with too much authority on it either. There were still too many unanswered questions. There was only one thing I could say for sure—the demons were mounting a comeback after Hellmaster’s demise. If we weren’t careful, we might see an all-out war between the humans and the demons.
That was what my gut told me as I gazed up into the clear blue sky.
Afterword
Scene: The Author and L
Au: Welcome back to the reprints! This volume starts our second major arc, which has a slightly different flavor to it. But thinking back on it, writing The Mystic Sword of Bezeld was kind of... eventful.
L: Oh? How so?
Au: Like, I got halfway through it and my computer’s hard drive got wiped.
L: Bwuh?! That’s... That’s...
Au: Yeah. It was... a long time ago. The world was all abuzz with news of the A*m incident. I was glued to the TV set and couldn’t get any writing done, so I had to call my editor and say, “Lock me in, please.”
L: You volunteered for that?
Au: Yes. Personally. It was my first ever lock-in!
L: That’s where the editor stands behind you the whole time, looking at their watch and clicking their tongue in irritation, right?
Au: Of course not! That’s creepy! What editor would do that? It just seems spiteful! They got me a room in a short-term rental, said, “Okay, this is your apartment. Get to it,” and left the rest to me.
L: Wow. In TV shows, you get the whole editor-standing-behind-you deal... I’m disappointed it wasn’t that kind of lock-in.
Au: I’m not sure what kind of lock-in that is, but... I’m sure every author-editor duo does things a little differently. And it’s not like an editor can afford to hover over a single author all day. And while I suspect that having someone standing leering over their shoulder would encourage some writers, it might cause others to freeze up completely.
So despite the fact that it was the A*m news that was distracting me, my editor got me a short-term rental at K*m**do in Tokyo, known for its ramen shops—and the A*m headquarters?! That’s what I was thinking about when I started my lockdown, and then when I was about halfway through the draft...
L: It went poof?
Au: Yep. Hard drive went poof. And I had no backup.
L: Wow... So did you think, “Maybe I should just make the whole thing an afterword”?
Au: Of course not. I contacted the editorial department, and fortunately someone who knew a lot about computers was able to restore the data. Incidentally, that same person would become my third editor.
L: Ah, so you recovered it in the end. Did you write the whole draft in Tokyo?
Au: No, I stopped halfway and came back to Osaka.
L: Coward! Why bother locking down if you were just going to call it off and go home?!
Au: Heh. You misunderstand. That was just the end of my lock-in in Tokyo! When you live alone, see, you have to go home once a week to check the mail and stuff. But going home to Osaka once a week was a huge drain on my time and my stamina. It was inefficient. And so, I returned to Osaka and began my second lockdown in a hotel room there!
L: You paid for it yourself?
Au: Yes! Obviously it was a work expense, but I paid for it out of pocket. The hotel had a pretty interesting system. You paid a fee up front, and then you settled your bill at checkout. There was a channel on the in-room TV where you could see how much money you’d already paid and the funds you had remaining. It would tick down every morning, and every time you ordered room service!
L: That seems kind of... stressful.
Au: Watching the number go down like that does make you feel weirdly trapped. But after I finished the draft, I realized that I’d spent nearly a month’s rent on one week at a hotel!
L: Well, renting an apartment would include a security deposit and such, so there’s more to it. But really, rather than reminiscing about the start of the second major novel arc, you just wanted to talk about locking down?
Au: Well, I just can’t separate this volume from my memories of writing it in lockdown. Besides, this might be educational for any readers who’re looking at doing a lock-in themselves in the future!
L: Seriously? Normal people never have to do that! And even if they do become writers, they should just turn in their drafts by the deadline so there’s no need to bunker down for a lock-in.
Au: Blergh!
L: Hey, he just coughed up blood.
Au: You... You just made enemies of two thousand manga artists and novelists in Japan...
L: Lots of people in lockdown, eh? Now, all silliness aside, there’ll be a little bit of a break before we put out the reprints of volume 10, but we’ll see you... in the afterword there!
Au: Yes, see you then.
L: Later, fellas!
Afterword: Over.
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Copyright
Slayers: Volume 9
by Hajime Kanzaka
Translated by Elizabeth Ellis
Edited by Megan Denton
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © Hajime Kanzaka, Rui Araizumi 2008
Illustrations by Rui Araizumi
SLAYERS Vol. 9
First published in Japan in 2008 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo
