Prologue

Glug, glug.

Murky water came flowing down from upstream.

Up until a few years ago, the river had been clear enough to see straight to the bottom, but the infrastructure work undertaken by the [Hero] who had appeared from another world… the so-called infrastructure development, had left it filthy.

Now it was clouded to the point that the bottom could no longer be seen, and refuse from the various households of the Royal Capital had been mixed in as well.

Infrastructure meant the development of the public facilities that served as the foundation of industry.

And it meant enriching daily life.

The building and widening of roads, for example.

Roads between the Royal Capital and the villages far from it. Roads to neighboring countries.

Improving the routes that ran between such places made travel easier, and so more people came to the Royal Capital; as more people came, commerce flourished, and as commerce flourished, manufacturing developed.

Water pipes extended into every household made life easier; bathing, once a privilege of the noble classes alone, spread to ordinary homes, and as the habit took hold, people grew cleaner and less prone to illness.

With sewers laid beneath the Royal Capital, refuse flowed down into the drains, and the streets above grew cleaner.

As trash decreased, the vermin that fed on it, rats and the like, dwindled too, staving off epidemics.

In this way, over the course of just these past few years, life in this other world had achieved growth that would ordinarily have required decades, even centuries.

But as people's lives grew easier, other things were made to bear the cost.

One of those things was this river.

Since dumping refuse directly would defile nature, a reservoir had been built at the river's end, where the water was purified by magic.

But even so, the river still grew foul as it had now, and even the magical purification was not perfect.

Above all, before the water ever reached the reservoir, the tainted flow seeped into the soil, and defilement accumulated in places out of human sight.

For now, it was still fine.

But somewhere ahead. Decades from now. Centuries from now.

One day, people would sacrifice nature.

Inevitably.

That was simply how it went when human life grew more bountiful.

And once people had tasted abundance, they could never go back.

If anything, they would seek a still more bountiful, still more livable life.

That was simply the kind of creatures people were.

But—

"Hmm?"

That day.

There was a reservoir located some distance from the Royal Capital.

It was a place where refuse piled up and the stench was foul; no one came near without good reason.

The man entrusted with the reservoir's management had been about to clear away the trash collected along the riverbank. Shouldering the wooden pole he had been carrying, he let out a slack-jawed sound.

He was a young man. Not yet thirty, by the look of him.

A pale-green tunic, and earth-colored trousers.

The skin showing through the worn fabric was healthily tanned by the sun.

The man raked his dingy blond hair back with his right hand and scratched roughly at the back of his head.

His gaze was fixed on the filthy, murky river… which, of late, had been carrying noticeably less trash.

That was it. The amount of refuse had decreased.

In times past, he had needed to make repeated round trips between the reservoir and the sewer drainage outlet over the course of a single day, making sure the accumulated trash didn't dam up the river's flow.

Which was precisely why the man let out a puzzled noise, dropped his gaze, and peered carefully into the river.

The water was as foul as ever, and yet there was little trash.

More than "little"… there was none.

In and of itself, less work was a wish come true for him. But it meant the problem lay at the source… the sewers.

If trash wasn't flowing into the river, then the sewers themselves were clogged.

And so he couldn't simply rejoice. After staring at the river for a while, he turned his gaze upstream and sighed.

"What to do, huh."

Normally, if the sewers were clogged, he would have to descend into them to clear the obstruction.

Otherwise the trapped refuse would dam the water, and in the worst case the sewer's foul water could even flow back into the Royal Capital's households.

It was to prevent exactly that that he was paid such a high salary as the reservoir's caretaker, but… his heart simply was not in it.

After all, it was the sewer.

The water that came down was filthy, and the smell would have made anyone unaccustomed to it feel sick.

To enter the sewer was to wrap oneself in that stench.

The thought of going down to such a place made him hesitate, no matter what.

For that very reason the man had balked, his feet rooted in place.

"Well, tomorrow's fine, I guess."

It hadn't been many days since the trash had stopped flowing in.

It wasn't as though the sewers would suddenly back up today or tomorrow.

More than anything, the sewers had been in operation for several years now, and the fact that the water had never once flowed back dulled his sense of crisis.

The smell.

A foul odor.

Enough to bend the nose, but tolerable once one grew used to it.

Right. Getting used to it. If he just got used to it.

People, for better or worse, were creatures that grew accustomed to things.

This present way of life, too. At first they had been bewildered by the changes, anxious, hesitant about constructing the strange new facilities, even on the [Hero]'s word.

But now, no one felt any unease about those facilities that raised the quality of their daily lives. They spent each day in vastly greater convenience than they had only a few years before.

And that would never change.

No. Rather, the world would grow even more convenient, in ways one couldn't even imagine.

It would change.

That was what the man thought. And surely everyone living in the Royal Capital… everyone connected to the [Hero] thought the same.

That was the pitfall.

The world changed.

The monsters, weeded out by that change, would vanish from the world.

That was what they believed.

In fact, since the [Demon King] had been struck down, monster damage had decreased, and the number of monsters themselves had clearly fallen as well.

And so.

People had begun to forget.

They saw only what was convenient and forgot what was inconvenient.

The fear faded; only the pleasant memories remained.

Slowly, sluggishly.

The dingy water passed before their eyes, but did not stay in their memory.

Eventually, the only thing left in the man's head was something like, "I really need to do that troublesome sewer cleaning."

Peace blunted the sense of crisis.

It made the very situation of crisis impossible to imagine.

Peace was the natural state, they thought.

There were no enemies anywhere, they thought.

Eventually, the world would become just that, they thought.

But the world had not yet become such a place.

"Maybe I'll talk it over with the adventurers later."

Muttering "what a pain" over and over, the man walked along the river toward the reservoir.

If, here and now, he had attended to his work in earnest, would the future have changed?

… No, it would not.

One man alone could not change the world.

Could not change the future.

The being that could save the world, that could save the future, was the [Hero], and the [Hero] was no longer in this world.

The anomaly in the sewers.

If only he had spoken of it today instead of tomorrow.

Perhaps the worst could yet have been avoided.

But it was already too late.

The man decided he would consult the adventurers about the sewer problem tomorrow. For today, he would carry out his work at his usual leisurely pace.

The river's defilement… its murk grew visibly thicker.

The man did not notice.

The river that carried the Royal Capital's refuse was foul; even if its color darkened somewhat, it was no different from usual.

And so he could not notice.

That the murk had grown thicker, that the defilement had grown heavier— that it had taken on a faint viscosity not like river water at all, and had become semi-solid.

That it caught on the rocks at the river's bottom, changed shape, and continued to drift downstream.

It was not just one.

Numerous amoeba-like soft bodies were drifting down the river.

Ahead lay the reservoir.

And then, the refuse-collection grounds.

For those soft bodies, that was food.

The man, oblivious to all this, walked along the riverbank… and then, suddenly, his feet halted.

"Oh, hey."

A piece of refuse, one that had drifted down from the sewer no doubt, had caught on a rock by the riverbank.

It was close enough that crouching down and reaching out would put it within arm's reach.

The water was foul, but that was the usual.

Without thinking much of it, the man reached out for the trash.

Wary of nothing. Just the usual work.

But—

"Eh!?"

Suddenly the river water rose up and wrapped around the man's wrist.

Startled by the abrupt motion, his body stiffened. A moment later, the sensation in his outstretched wrist and everything beyond it simply vanished.

The numbness traveled up his arm to his shoulder, his chest, his torso, his neck—

"—, ——…"

His voice failed him.

He could no longer keep his balance.

The man's posture broke, and just like that he fell into the defiled river. With a loud splash, droplets flew up and soiled the ground.

It was an eerie sight. Having fallen in, the man could not pull himself out… and without struggling at all, he was carried downstream.

A body robbed of its freedom by paralytic poison could not swim; he floated face-down along the current.

He could not breathe.

At last, drawing the foul river water deep into his lungs, he expired.

The man's body drifted along the river… but partway down, it sank.

In the murky water, nothing could be seen clearly.

Wind blew, and the trees that lined the river swayed, their boughs bearing fresh green leaves.

One day, drinking the river water tainted by the flow of refuse, these trees too would wither.

It was a beautiful scene. So quiet and gentle that it seemed impossible to believe a corpse had just vanished there.

That corpse did not float back up from the river.

Devoured by the river.

That, perhaps, was the most accurate way to put it.

With the man gone, only the beautiful scenery remained.

There was no one to see it.

Only a quiet scene was left there.

Not a soul.

The burble of the defiled river, and the sound of grass and trees swayed by the wind.

That was all.

Then, with a wet plop, a revolting sound rang out.

It was quite some time after the man had been swept down the river.

The sun that had been at its zenith now leaned westward, and the world began to dye itself in dusk rather than blue.

Together with the foul, revolting sound, Something crawled out of the river.

Once It had crawled forth, It began to move, Its motion slow and sluggish.

A revolting Thing.

It was like an enormous slug. Even granting the comparison to a slug, its body was large enough that even after swallowing a whole man, there would have been room to spare.

Perhaps one size larger than a farmstead cow.

Looking closely, its body was translucent.

It was the same color as the river water defiled with refuse. And inside that translucent body, the shape of a man could be seen.

The reservoir caretaker, just devoured by the river.

He was not alive.

He did not so much as twitch; inside the slime that called to mind an enormous slug, he was slowly being digested.

That slime, sluggish in its movements, began to move.

Taking in the grass that lay along its path, digesting it.

Bare ground was visible behind the trail the slime crawled along. It seemed it could not digest stones; only earth and rocks were left behind.

As the slime made its slow way toward the Royal Capital, another huge slime crawled out of the river, separate from the first.

One after another. And another. And another.

The number easily exceeded ten, and though each moved independently, every one of them was heading for the Royal Capital.

Several of the slimes had taken rats from the sewers and the refuse-grounds, scraps of food, and the like into their translucent bodies, and were trying to digest them.

These were slimes born of Tiana and the others within the sewers, slimes that had then absorbed the filth of the reservoir at the river's end and the refuse of the collection grounds.

Their mass was enormous to a degree that seemed impossible for newborn slimes, and above all, their appearance was hideous.

Those slimes advanced.

Through the dusk-shrouded world.

From the place they had crawled out, they had traversed perhaps half the distance to the Royal Capital.

At last, the sun hid itself completely behind the mountains, and the darkness of night fell over the world.

The slimes, already darkly turbid to begin with, melted into the dark of night and grew difficult to see.

From the still-distant outer walls of the Royal Castle… from their watchtowers, the dingy black slimes would be hard to spot.

It was not by design.

And yet it almost felt as though the world itself was siding with the slimes.

A world made more convenient by the wisdom the [Hero] had given.

But in compensation, nature was being sacrificed; that too was a fact.

Was that why the world took the side of monsters, rather than men?

More than ten slimes were advancing.

Their destination was the Royal Capital.

Through the world enveloped in twilight, slimes darker and more hideous than the dark itself moved on.

 

*

 

Soft sunlight streamed in through stained glass.

Midday. A bright hour. Not long after the sun had begun to rise.

It was the hour when the cold stone walls and floor were just beginning to warm. Two figures walked soundlessly across the thick carpet.

One was white. A pure, near-snow-white silver.

Her beautiful silver hair reached down to her hips, and the thin-silk dress she wore was white.

The skin that had been hidden beneath a thick robe during her travels with the [Hero] remained pale and untanned, and her well-fleshed body swayed softly with every step.

The richly-ripened twin hills, and the buttocks that pushed out her skirt. The waist cinched by the corset was so slim it seemed it would snap at the slightest pressure. The beauty that had only ripened with age was nearing perfection.

"And so… what did Fiana and the others say?"

Leticia. The Queen of this elven nation, this magic kingdom; the great mage who had once journeyed alongside the [Hero].

Even as tension bled into her expression, she walked with a relaxed gait that masked it, treading the carpet that led to the throne.

The skirt of her pure-white dress was slightly disordered. That, more eloquently than her face, spoke of what lay within her.

"According to the fast-rider, five days ago today, they slew the slime in question."

Walking behind Leticia, the head maid relayed in terse words the report brought in by a messenger who had reached the Royal Capital only moments before, gasping for his last breaths.

The head maid who oversaw all the maids serving in this castle.

But her face too was tinged with faint tension, and seemed somewhat stiff.

Leticia, for her part, despite the supposedly bright report, showed no relief in her expression.

"The news is several days old, but the subjugation party intends to search the abandoned mine thoroughly and confirm complete safety before returning."

"I see."

Only then did Leticia finally lower herself onto the throne.

With a rustle of cloth, the long skirt that had concealed her ankles spread out across the deep-red carpet.

She rested both hands on her thighs and crossed her legs beneath the skirt. As she straightened her back firmly and tucked in her chin, her bearing took on a dignified air, and at the same time her bountiful bosom was emphasized all the more.

With just that small gesture, her breasts swayed softly. They were of such a size as to call to mind two large fruits ripening at her chest.

Even granting that the corset emphasized them, they were too large for an elf, a race of comparatively scant bodily flesh.

Heedless of the chest that had only continued to grow ever since she had given birth to two daughters, she settled her weight back against the throne.

"And, the castle town?"

"We have increased the number of patrolling soldiers, and have issued notice that even in the daytime, people are not to go to areas with little foot-traffic."

"Casualties?"

"… From the reports I've heard, the number seems to be decreasing."

It was a strange phenomenon that had begun after Fiana and the others left the Royal Capital.

Residents of the Royal Capital were suddenly vanishing.

It wasn't entirely without pattern. The victims were uniformly those who had ventured deep into alleys with little foot traffic, or who had been outside at night after the sun had set.

When they were alone, not in groups.

People who had stepped out from a tavern to relieve themselves and never returned; people who had gone to a back alley to put out the household trash and disappeared. These strange incidents had been continuing in the Royal Capital.

And the Royal Castle was no exception.

The victims numbered only one so far, but that one had vanished as well, right after Fiana and the others had returned—Tiana, a maid raised by Leticia herself, a direct subordinate of the very head maid now giving this report.

That some sort of trouble was afoot was clear.

But what kind of trouble, and what was causing it, was unknown.

If there was anything suspicious, it was, again, the slime that had just been mentioned.

The elven knight Fiana and the lower-rank knight Alfira had returned from being attacked by the slime.

When they had come back to the Royal Capital, Leticia alone had heard from them about what kind of being that slime was… that it was the kind of monster most loathsome to women.

That was precisely why she suspected it as the cause of the trouble.

However, this was still only conjecture, and as a fellow woman she felt such revulsion that she hesitated even to put it into words. She had not been able to bring herself to tell even the head maid delivering this report.

What was she to say?

A monster that violated women and made them bear its young might be in the castle town.

Were she to speak such words, the populace, with no power to fight, would fall into panic.

And once panic set in, until things calmed down, or perhaps forever, the people would leave the Royal Capital.

The Royal Capital that the [Hero] had brought to flourish. The land that the man Leticia loved had loved.

That this land should be emptied of its people.

The thought that she could not bear it obstructed her in conveying the danger.

More than anything, in a world where the number of monsters had continued to decrease ever since the [Demon King] had been defeated by the [Hero], the sense for detecting their threat had grown dull.

Not the work of a monster, but trouble caused by some human villain.

That was the more natural assumption, and the only reason the shadow of a monster surfaced in a corner of Leticia's mind was that she had heard Fiana's account in advance.

There was no evidence that it was a monster's doing.

Had she not heard about the slime from Fiana and the others, she would never have dreamed of a monster's existence.

And— after all, though it might impregnate women, it was just a slime.

The weakest, lowliest of monsters.

So long as the setting was not an enclosed, sunless space like the abandoned mine, even a surprise attack was nothing to fear.

To Leticia, a slime was the sort of creature that could be defeated with a mere glance, without even needing to weave an incantation.

That was just how weak a monster it was.

And the same held true of the people of this nation.

When all was said and done, it was just a slime. Supposedly they could use magic, but they still feared heat, and could be rendered helpless simply by being frozen.

The elven people, to greater or lesser degrees, could all wield magic.

Even granting a surprise attack by a slime, could they really be carried off without resisting?

The reports thus far numbered several people. Among them were even men.

If anything, it was more natural to assume that some peculiar bandits had slipped into the castle town.

Even so, she could think of no reason that would keep the Royal Capital from being thrown into confusion…

"And the search for Tiana?"

"My apologies. After she returned to her room, the trail goes cold…"

There had been no progress for several days now, and Leticia placed a finger to her shapely chin in thought.

Perhaps, after all, a fairly skilled scoundrel had slipped in. For a maid as accomplished as Tiana to be carried off, she could think of no other explanation.

Tiana's room had been ransacked, but there had not been so much as a drop of blood, and had the culprit been a slime, not so much as a drop of any liquid either.

"For now, one of the problems has been dealt with… is that how I should think of it?"

"Yes."

In a sense, people were far more troublesome than monsters.

That was something Leticia had learned upon taking the throne.

Once they hid themselves in a crowd, ordinary folk and madmen alike became indistinguishable; there was no way to know what they might do.

"Increase the security personnel… and if we have gained no more information by today than what we have now, supply the information to not only the Knight Order but the Mages' Order as well."

"Understood."

The head maid bowed.

She understood the bad blood between the Knight Order and the Mages' Order.

For now, she intended to make use of it. If the Knight Order could not solve this matter by their own strength alone, their pride would be on the line; they would only grow more desperate. And if even that failed, the Mages' Order, eager to sell the Knight Order a favor, would grow desperate in turn.

(Truly, I'd prefer if they grew motivated not for their own sake but for the nation… for the people.)

She muttered to herself, and sighed.

… Come to think of it, today she hadn't even been able to wake her daughters.

Recalling that, the mother sighed again.

(I have to deal with this problem, quickly…)

Harm might come to her daughters as well.

So she thought, but when her daughters went to the school of magic, knights accompanied them as guards, and knights and soldiers were always keeping watch on their rooms.

However closely Tiana might have attended to Leticia's personal needs, the maids' quarters were on the first floor.

She could not even imagine a bandit who could slip past the patrolling knights and soldiers, climb the castle walls, and infiltrate her daughters' rooms.

Not even a mage.

The interior of the castle was designed so that any use of magic would be immediately detected. Should a bandit infiltrate, or a rebellion break out, the defenses for such contingencies had been prepared.

That was precisely why Leticia's thoughts turned to the outside of the castle, to the castle town where the populace lived.

Increase the patrols, and for a while, however inconvenient it might be, ask the populace to refrain from going out at night… that, of course, would draw complaints from the taverns and from certain men's-services establishments such as the brothels, but it couldn't be helped.

Money mattered, but so did human life.

In the worst case, dissatisfaction among the populace might come to a boil…

"Haaa."

The queen leaned her weight against the armrest of the throne, and let out a sigh.

The color of fatigue lay only faintly across her stunning, beautiful face.

A malice she could not see was unpleasant, and poorly suited to Leticia's straightforward nature.

Just as something close to irritation slipped out along with a heavy breath, from afar came the high sound of footsteps on stone.

The footfall of metal greaves was audible, and her long, characteristically elven ears twitched faintly.

Within her line of sight, two figures were approaching.

The Knight Commander, to whom the security of the castle town had been entrusted, and his aide.

"They've come."

She straightened her posture, threw out her chest, and slowly recrossed her long legs.

Her bountiful twin hills, asserting their presence even through the dress, trembled softly, and her silver hair, shining beautifully as it caught the sunlight, slid like silk over the cloth of the dress.

Leticia steeled herself to convey what she had been thinking earlier: that she would also be borrowing aid from the side of the mages.

"Your Majesty, I have been summoned. What business have you with me?"

The heavy sound of armor, the grinding of steel against steel, ceased.

The Knight Commander, who had been walking on the carpet, halted his steps, knelt, and bowed his head.

Sitting on the throne several steps higher, Leticia looked down at the Knight Commander; at that, the head maid behind her moved soundlessly to the edge of the throne hall.

"My apologies for summoning you so early in the morning."

"Not at all."

"Now then, regarding the trouble in the castle town that I asked the Knight Order to deal with the other day—"

As Leticia spoke, the Knight Commander raised his face and met her eyes squarely.

"I should be able to bring you a favorable answer in the near future."

"I see. I have no complaints regarding the Knight Order's ability. I believe that, in time, you will resolve this."

"Then—"

"However, yesterday too, more victims were taken."

It was not her intention to cut him off, but she spoke as if to layer her words over his.

"Are the Knight Order's personnel sufficient?"

"Of course."

"… Should it become necessary, I am considering proposing that personnel from the Mages' Order be assigned as well."

The Knight Commander, who had raised his face, for an instant unmistakably twisted his expression.

Feigning not to notice, Leticia let out a small breath. Quietly enough, of course, that the Knight Commander at his distance would not hear.

"Make sure no more victims are taken, please?"

"Yes! Leave it to me— without fail."

Taking that as a signal that the conversation was over, the Knight Commander stood.

"By the way… we have received reports here as well, but is there anything the Knight Order has noticed?"

"All the information we have obtained on our end has been forwarded to Your Majesty…"

"Ah, no… I mean strange rumors among the lower-rank soldiers, that sort of unconfirmed information."

The information that reached Leticia came up through the head maid, but even so it wasn't everything.

The unconfirmed information she had mentioned was often kept within the breasts of those investigating until its credibility could be confirmed—rumor-like talk of that sort.

In fact, there were many rumors in the castle town that never made it to Leticia.

That the missing had been carried off by slave-traders; that monsters had in fact infiltrated the city; that they were assassins from some other country… and so on.

Such rumors were the rootless, baseless talk of those who lived in the castle town.

And yet, sometimes truth was mixed in. Rootless though they were, talk that led to the truth did exist on occasion.

"Ha, well… Let me see…"

The Knight Commander placed his gauntleted hand to his chin, in the gesture of stroking his long white beard.

It was his habit when thinking.

"When the soldiers were canvassing, there have apparently been many thefts of late."

"Thefts, you say?"

"That is… not everyone living in the castle town is wealthy, you see…"

"That, I understand."

For all that the standard of living had risen so much these past few years, not all who lived in the city were wealthy.

There were not, at least, any who lacked for a place to live, but there were those who lacked for food.

Such thieves… thieves especially common among the elderly were a source of anguish for Leticia.

Life had grown bountiful, and jobs were plentiful. But there were those who could not adapt to that newly bountiful life.

The elves were a long-lived race. They were also a race that did not handle change well.

In short: people who could not forget the old way of living alongside nature, and yet could not bring themselves to leave the ever-more-bountiful Royal Capital either.

Such people had difficulty finding work, and so they shut themselves up in their homes and lost their drive.

A measure of relief was provided—from the taxes collected from the people, daily provision was made for at least a minimum of food. But since they did not work, their lives never improved.

More than that, the fact that the relief itself wounded the pride of those receiving it was another factor.

In one corner of the castle town, such people often committed crimes; thefts, and… and rapes, were not uncommon.

There were many voices saying that this latest incident was their doing as well.

Or perhaps, that they were committing thefts while taking advantage of the incident.

That, the Knight Commander said, was why he had not reported the matter of the thefts to Leticia.

Above all, the merchants who had been robbed had said that what had been stolen was food… and not the high-priced sort, but common goods bought in bulk and sold cheap.

The quantity, however, was extraordinary; on one occasion several barrels' worth of fruit had vanished in a single night.

That was obviously not something one person alone could carry off, nor something that could be consumed in a few days either.

The Knight Commander said the culprit would surely slip up and be caught soon. Both Leticia and the head maid behind her thought so as well.

Above all, fruit would rot within a few days.

In that case there was no point in stealing it; the thieves would have to be in a rush to sell it before it spoiled.

"And anything else?"

"Well, nothing in particular… oh, there are also reports of strange sounds outside their houses at night."

"Sounds?"

"According to the soldiers, the sounds are apparently most unsettling."

"Unsettling sounds?"

"When asked specifically what kind, it was hard to explain. Just that they were unsettling, the report says."

"The cause of the sounds?"

"When we examined the surroundings of the houses where such complaints were filed, there often turned out to be drainage faults, or leakage from the water pipes."

In other words, they had found the sound of water leaking to be unsettling.

Hearing that, Leticia let out a small sigh, truly only a small one.

It was probably just over-anxiety, she thought.

"Understood. Then, please continue…"

That she paused at "continue" carried meaning.

It was meant to remind him of what she had said earlier: that if the investigation dragged on, she would draw personnel from the Mages' Order as well.

Indeed, the Knight Commander's expression grew harsher than when they had been speaking of mere rumors.

The kidnappings stirring up the castle town.

If the Knight Order could not catch the culprit, their honor was on the line. It was a comment crafted with that level of pride in mind.

The Knight Order might feel that if they could not resolve this by their own hand, they would be branded as good for nothing.

Watching the Knight Commander's back as he left the throne hall, Leticia sighed.

The Knight Order, the Mages' Order, the nobility.

Bringing them together was difficult. Could they not simply join hands?

She had thought it, considered it, many times, and to this day it had not come about.

Competing among themselves was fine. But strife, she could not overlook.

For now there were no external enemies, but monsters yet endured. There was no guarantee that a powerful monster like the [Demon King] would not appear again.

A martial strength capable of fighting when that time came, capable of fighting as one.

That was something she must not forget.

The [Hero] was no longer in this world. Should a powerful monster like the [Demon King] appear again, this time they would have to fight, repel, and slay it themselves.