Ch.1Chapter 1. The Demon Lord is Vanquished, the Hero is Abandoned, and the Porter Saves the Day.

“It’s not over yet! Do you think this ends here!”

The final battle.

The Demon Lord, backed into a corner, was struggling desperately.

As she spewed dark, blood-colored demonic energy and attacked wildly, the shield knight Rainfold defended at the front with his large shield.

“Annihilation!”

“ARGHHHH!”

“Rainfold!”

When the Demon Lord clenched her fist, Rainfold’s arm crumpled along with his shield.

Witnessing her fiancé’s injury, the hero Lucy screamed, and the saint Arsil quickly cast holy healing on Rainfold.

“I’m fine, just focus on dealing with her!”

“Lucy! End this quickly! Don’t worry about injuries! I can heal everything!”

Rainfold and Arsil each shouted as they quickly readied themselves for battle against the Demon Lord.

“Be careful!”

As the Demon Lord raised her hand again, the elven archer Naidrian fired an arrow to interfere.

The Demon Lord had no choice but to strike down the arrow, causing the magical energy she had been holding to explode.

“Net, weaken, intimidate, slow.”

Not missing the opportunity, the mage Tigria cast her spell.

Befitting a member of the hero’s party, she activated magic with simple words to implement the formula, significantly slowing the Demon Lord’s movements.

“Now!”

Naidrian fired arrows in succession, binding the Demon Lord.

“This time I’m going for the finishing blow!”

Arsil clashed her fists together, infusing the holy power she had forged into the hero’s sacred sword, Hunoni.

“Optimal opportunity.”

This time, Tigria used fire magic to push the Demon Lord further into a corner.

“Lucy! Do it!”

Rainfold steadfastly blocked the black demonic energy that continued to shoot up like flames.

Under their encouragement, the hero raised Hunoni high.

“I draw!”

A dazzling radiance enveloped Hunoni.

“A peaceful day with you!”

Lucy thrust the heavy sacred sword, filled with anticipation, with all her might.

“UWAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!”

The radiance cut through the black magical energy.

The sacred power, shattering the impure energy, struck the Demon Lord and cleaved her diagonally in two.

“Kuhuk…!”

Finally, the Demon Lord fell to her knees.

Even as she collapsed, the Demon Lord stared at only one place.

At the end of her gaze was a porter trembling alone in the distance, holding a small shield.

“You know… this isn’t the end… I will surely…!”

But before she could finish her words, she scattered into black dust.

Thud

Leaving behind only what appeared to be a weighty horn.

“Haa… haa… we did it!”

“Not yet. We need to put that horn in the casket quickly!”

Lucy was panting, but as Arsil said, it wasn’t completely over yet.

Unfortunately, the role of containing the horn wasn’t for the combatants.

Hero Lucy pushed back her sweat-soaked red hair and expressed her irritation.

“Hey, porter! What are you doing not running over here right now!”

“Yes!”

The porter was wearing a peculiar mask.

The mask, with its squinting, broadly smiling expression, didn’t even have proper holes, yet he moved around seeing perfectly well.

In fact, what was peculiar wasn’t the mask but the porter’s very existence.

The reason he was assigned to carry the sacred casket that would contain the Demon Lord’s horn as proof of her defeat was because, as a porter, he could carry the casket which took up a massive amount of inventory space without issue.

More precisely, he could carry the casket “among other things.”

“Here it is!”

“…You want me to handle that demonic energy?”

When he took out the sacred casket from his special item “Porter’s Pouch” and held it out, Lucy expressed her irritation again.

The porter looked around in bewilderment.

For someone like him, who just had a bit of strength and could carry many tools with his special item, along with a sturdy body but no other advantages, it was difficult to handle the demonic energy being emitted from the horn.

“Damn it, I’m at my limit.”

The saint immediately shook her head.

The other party members, except for the naturally expressionless mage, also showed reluctance.

The battle with the Demon Lord had been so fierce that everyone was exhausted.

Eventually, the porter swallowed hard and approached the horn.

The energy emanating from this thing, smaller than a palm, was no joke.

Tssssssss

“AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!”

Though he tried to move quickly, his arm instantly turned black as he grabbed the horn.

It was clearly demonic energy contamination.

But none of the party members were surprised or concerned.

The porter, a non-combatant, was always treated this way.

Just now, he had been hiding behind his shield, trembling alone during the desperate battle with the Demon Lord, so they felt more annoyed than anything.

“NNNGGGHHH!”

With all his might, he placed it in the sacred casket and closed the lid, and no more demonic energy flowed out from beyond the casket.

But the porter’s arm was still sizzling.

“Stop being so dramatic. Rainfold endured even when his arm was shattered earlier.”

That was a clear fact.

The shield knight’s arm had been crushed by the Demon Lord.

And the saint had immediately healed him.

The problem was that now the saint was scolding the porter instead of healing him, but that was beside the point.

“It’s finally over!”

Lucy jumped into her fiancé’s arms with joy.

Rainfold caught her and smiled with difficulty.

“Be careful, Lucy. The Demon Lord was so violent that there’s a cliff behind us now.”

As Rainfold said, what had been just a high ground had been carved and eroded during the fierce battle, becoming a high cliff.

It was truly befitting of a Demon Lord to create such terrain features in a single battle.

“Now we go back to the Empire and have our wedding!”

“Haha, first we need to take care of post-battle matters. We need to ensure proper distribution of merits and contributions.”

“Hmph.”

As the blonde knight gently admonished her with a fresh smile, Lucy snorted.

“What merits do the imperial family and those noble nobodies have when they just waited safely in the Empire while we risked our lives fighting?”

“Lucy, the imperial family and nobles fulfilled their responsibilities in their own positions. In fact, they were the ones who kept the other demon forces occupied so we could fight the Demon Lord.”

“That’s nonsense. We could have crushed all the demon forces confronting us at the front line and advanced. It’s because they panicked when the front line got a little closer to the Empire that we had to recklessly push toward the Demon Lord.”

“Lucy.”

“‘If you’re the hero, stop the demon forces now,’ ‘If you’re the hero, slay the Demon Lord now.’ All talk, those cowards. Every one of them is incompetent and stupid. Especially that princess. She just became the crown princess because all her siblings died, yet she’s so arrogant…”

“Lucy!”

“Alright, alright.”

At her fiancé’s stern command, Lucy reluctantly stopped complaining.

Though she loved the handsome and kind blonde man so much, she couldn’t help but feel resentful when he defended the imperial family and nobles.

Lucy believed that a fiancé should always take her side.

But she went too far.

Moving to the edge of the cliff to show her sulking, Lucy finally said what she shouldn’t have.

“When we get back, we should just overthrow the damn Empire’s leadership.”

At that moment, the air changed.

Lucy, who had been secretly waiting for Rainfold to come comfort her, frowned and turned around when there was no response.

There stood the naturally expressionless mage, the saint, the archer, and finally Rainfold, all looking at her with cold gazes.

“W-what? Why are you all looking at me like…”

“Capture, rotate, displace, crush.”

CRACK-!

With a swift incantation, Lucy’s left leg twisted at an unnatural angle and fell off.

As she lost balance and fell, only a deflating sound came from her mouth.

“Huh…?”

“Lucy!”

At the unbelievable sight, the saint raised her holy power and rushed toward her.

“Arsil… that crazy woman suddenly…”

CRACK!

“AAAAAAHHH!”

Surprisingly, the saint didn’t heal Lucy with holy power but grabbed her right arm with her bare hands and broke it.

SWISH-!

Just before she hit the ground, two arrows flew from somewhere, tearing through Lucy’s arms and sending them flying with the air.

THUD

It was the sound like a wet rag being thrown down.

That was the grand noise made by the hero who had slain the Demon Lord as she landed on the ground.

“Rainfold-!”

Lucy instinctively called for her beloved.

She desperately called for the shield knight who had always protected her without laying a finger on her because he cherished her.

“Ah….”

But seeing Rainfold’s ominous gaze as he approached her, she immediately fell into despair.

“Why…?”

She couldn’t understand.

Weren’t they comrades who had shared life and death?

Why would those who had just risked their lives to defeat the Demon Lord do this?

The answer came from Rainfold.

“Hero Lucy. Now that the Demon Lord is gone, the Empire’s greatest threat is you.”

“What are you saying… Rainfold… Morgan! Why am I the Empire’s…”

“You were too arrogant. Constantly showing hostility toward the imperial family. Openly talking about overthrowing the regime.”

“Rainfold!”

“By the order of Crown Princess Rinasien Karrun, I, Morgan Rainfold, and the hero’s party members will arrest the traitor Lucy’ena Estel here!”

The knight raised his shield.

The bottom had a pointed edge, honed to push back enemies and attack.

Without hesitation, Rainfold stabbed the shield’s point into Lucy’s remaining thigh.

THWACK!

“Aagh!”

THWACK!

“Morgaaaan-!!!”

THWACK!

It was still just a shield, even if it was pointed.

In the midst of the pain of bones breaking and flesh being crushed, Lucy suddenly realized.

Rainfold had never once allowed her to call him by his first name.

THWACK!

“Ugh!”

Amidst the profuse bleeding, suspicion bloomed.

“You… you planned this from the beginning…?”

THWACK!

“Kuk…! Did you ever… love me…?”

The knight raised his shield one last time, and thus granted a final mercy.

“From the beginning, I’ve only had Rinasien Karrun in my heart.”

That mercy was an answer to her doubt, and the shield that came down again mercilessly severed her last remaining left leg.

But Lucy felt more pain in her heart than from her severed limbs.

An unbelievable reality.

No, the reality she had believed in was a festival of lies from the start.

“Are we going to kill this one?”

“We’ve severed her limbs, so we’ll bind her and escort her to the Empire. Then, along with the declaration of the Demon Lord’s defeat, she’ll be publicly executed as an example to strengthen imperial authority.”

“Tch, there’s nothing left attached to her body.”

The hero, whose heart had died, listened to the conversation between the saint and the knight with blank eyes.

Even when the mage cauterized her severed areas with magic at the knight’s direction, she only flinched slightly without any other reaction.

“You haven’t forgotten our promise, have you?”

“It’s not over yet. The contract stipulates escorting her to the Empire. Naidrian, don’t be hasty.”

Is this how it ends?

“The elf is right. We need confirmation. You haven’t forgotten the promise, have you?”

“I didn’t expect the saint to harbor such deep suspicion.”

I didn’t ask for much.

“If we’re strictly following the contract terms, the first phase was subduing the hero, and the second is escorting her. Therefore, having completed the first phase, I request reconfirmation and reassurance of the promise.”

“Sigh, alright. Since we’re short on time, I’ll go over it here.”

I just wanted an ordinary life with the person I loved, and I just complained a bit about things that might interfere with that.

“First, for you Naidrian and the elves…”

Was I really that arrogant?

As a tear rolled down Lucy’s cheek, a voice that everyone had forgotten rang out.

“Secret Art: Instant Movement.”

“What?!”

Amidst everyone’s confusion, someone approached Lucy at a speed invisible to the eye.

It was the porter.

“The porter?! Damn, I forgot…!”

“Naidrian, shoot!”

Rainfold shouted urgently as he pushed aside the startled Arsil, but it was already too late.

Even Naidrian couldn’t track the movements of the porter who had used the one-time item “Secret Art: Instant Movement” containing an ultimate movement skill.

By the time Naidrian was drawing an arrow, the porter was already carrying Lucy and flying over the cliff.

“Tigria!!”

“Capture… failed.”

Leaving the confused group behind, the porter sighed in mid-air.

“Ah, this wasn’t in the plan.”

The Instant Movement wasn’t simply about moving quickly.

It was an ultimate skill that accelerated the results of the user’s actions.

Therefore, the speed of falling in mid-air was also incomparable to a normal fall.

SPLASH!

As if it had been arranged, the porter and Lucy were sucked into the deep valley water far below the towering cliff.

This dive was possible because the porter had memorized the map structure of this game.

Moreover, he couldn’t possibly not know the final battle map of the original.

“LUCY’ENAAAA-!!!”

Rainfold’s scream could be heard from above.

What powerful lungs he had.

The porter, Lin, breathed an inward sigh of relief in the water.

They had left behind the sacred casket containing the Demon Lord’s horn, so the others wouldn’t be able to pursue immediately.

He relaxed his body.

According to the DLC content, they would drift along and reach a suitable place.

Instead, Lin held Lucy’s body tightly, making sure water wouldn’t enter her eyes and nose.