Yomigaeri no Maou

No matter what it may be, repeated practice is essential.
There’s a saying amongst those who need to maintain some kind of skill that goes ‘Rest for one day, and you’ll have wasted three’, and this went for magic and martial arts as well.

Luru was one of those who believed in these words, so he would never miss practice for a single day. He could now move in ways that he couldn’t as a baby, and practised not just magic, but swordsmanship too.

Early every morning after having breakfast, he’d practise mana manipulation and swordsman in a place with n.o.body else around, a little removed from the village.
The swordsmanship techniques he practised was the form he learnt in the past.
In other words, it was the ancient demon race style, or the demon king style perhaps you should say.

He was also learning modern human swordsmanship from his father, Patrick, but when he moved on a whim, it was his old swordsmanship that came out.
Of course he couldn’t use these techniques when practising with his father.
His father was a knight that served the country, and not only was he quite skilled himself, it seemed that it was easy for him to see through the princ.i.p.als behind his opponent’s techniques.
As long as this was true, if he started using the techniques that he used as a demon king, his father would surely feel that something was out of play.
That’s why Luru used nothing but modern swordsmanship when he practised with his father.
Furthermore, learning new techniques meaning practising with nothing but those new techniques was pretty good training, so he didn’t have any complaints in particular.
For when he would leave the village one day, he’d try and preserve as many of the ancient demon style techniques as possible, and keep them as his trump cards, he thought.
For that sake, there was no choice but to reach a practical level of skill in the style his father taught, and because of that he focused and earnestly repeated the things his father taught.

Of course even so, his original style of combat was none other than the one that was supported by his huge mana and physical ability.
The reason he was able to make the most efficient and logical use of these advantages was because the demon race with magical and physical ability far above humans had spent long years creating these many techniques.
That’s why it was necessary for him to practice the many techniques of the ancient demon style of swordsmanship and magic so that he would be able to use them without a problem in his human body, so he could use them when he really needed them in the future.

He continued to wholeheartedly train so he would be able to use both the human techniques and the ancient demon techniques.
This would take more than ordinary effort.

His days would start with training mostly ancient demon style techniques in the early morning, and then training with Rusty the human swordsmanship he had learned his father once the sun had risen.
The days when he trained with Rusty were often arrangements from the day beforehand, and it wasn’t something they did every day.
Because of that, it wasn’t rare that he would spend the whole day training by himself as he did today, and immersing himself in training ancient demon techniques all day.

Listening to the cries of birds in the morning mist during training calmed him down, and he could feel his mind sharpening.
Perhaps because of his training each day, he could feel the mana in his body circulating as he wished, and because his physical ability had weakened since becoming a human, through the circulation of mana, he could feel himself getting closer a step at a time to his old self.

Pa.s.sing his days like that, he recalled a number of things.
Most of them were memories of his time as a demon king.

The final battle with the hero.
He remembered the many techniques the hero had shown him, refined enough that even the demon king had had a tough battle.
Lately he had been thinking of recreating(/reproducing) those techniques, and though he found that he still couldn’t do it, it was a good way to kill time.

And like that, after reviewing his techniques from when he was a demon king, and swinging his wooden sword(practising) so as to usurp the techniques that the hero had used in his memories, he would end.

By the time he had finished all of his practice, the sun would usually set, and he’d carry home the empty lunchbox that his mother had prepared for him. Such was his daily routine.

Normally the village women would finish doing the daily things they needed to, like working the fields, and would be chatting with each other for example, and the smell of cooking dinner would waft about.

However, that day was different, and Luru noticed the village being more flurried than usual.

The women wore uneasy expressions, and the men were busiedly running about.

Wondering what was going on, Luru asked one of the village girls he was acquainted with.

“Did something happen? Every seems oddly unsettled.”

When he did, she replied with discomfiture visible in her expression.

“That’s… It seems that Rusty and the rest aren’t here. Even though they searched for them, they can’t find them!”

Were it just that much, it would be just be something common so it didn’t seem like it would be enough to fl.u.s.ter them so much, or so Luru thought, but it seems that it wasn’t so simple an issue.
The village girl continued.

“If they were just somewhere in the village it’d be fine but… I mean, look, those kids, and Rusty in particular admried adventurers, right? That’s why, the adventurers from yesterday, umm…? [(What were their names again?)]”

“Gran and Yuumis?”

“Right. We were wondering if perhaps Rusty and the others followed after them…”

The first thing he thought of when he heard that was though Gran and Yuumis were certainly quite the oddb.a.l.l.s and carefree, he didn’t think they were the type to bring children to dangerous places.
And the villagers should have understood that as well, after speaking with them yesterday.
But what she was worried about was probably something completely different.

That is, the concern that they hadn’t been taken along by Gran, but had tailed Gran of their own accord.

When Luru suggested this, she agreed with him and said with a nod,

“Right! That’s exactly right! That’s why everyone is worried… It’d be great if they were actually in the village and we were worried for nothing but… Ahh[Ohhh], talking like this just makes me more worried. I’ll go help search!”

Saying so, she ran off to search for them.

Luru considered things.
It was natural to search for them, and he had to as well.
But where should he begin with?

Since the villages were searching inside the village he thought that he should search in the forest, but the forest was wide.
Just where on earth should he begin?

However, yesterday Gran and Yuumis had mentioned the ruin.
Luru remembered the men of the village telling them the location.
Being the case, if they had followed after Gran and Yuumis, then they’d have headed towards the ruin.

Having come up with a plan for now, Luru headed to the village entrance.

When he did, he saw somebody running towards the village.
Looking carefully, he found it was somebody he knew.

A woman with long ears, beautiful skin, and a slender body.
She was the elven woman, named…

“Yuumis!”

“…You’re, Luru-kun!? Why are you here?”

Having run up to Luru, though Yuumis looked a little surprised to see him, her expression immediately stiffened and she said,

“Stand back a little! I’m going to place a barrier around the village, okay!?”

“A barrier? Why?”

“I’m kind of lacking time, so be quiet for a moment… 『O pure spirits of the forest… Lend me your power. With my mana as recompense, create a wall that separates the inside from the outside』”

Yuumis had already begun chanting without delay.
Her chant was very familiar to Luru’s ears, formed from the proper grammar and syntax that he was used to, but right now wasn’t the time to think about that.
What was the bgiger issue was that Rusty, Mii and Yuuri were in the forest.
Yuumis said that she was spreading a barrier.
Though he didn’t know why she was doing so, the spell she was chanting was for a barrier of absolute separation.
In other words, if she finished chanting this, he wouldn’t be able to leave the village.
Luru intended to search for them in the forest, and if he couldn’t do it himself then he was going to have the adults in the village do it, so letting Yuumis do this would be extremely troubling for him.
Thus, Luru said,

“Please wait a bit! Rusty, Mii and Yuuri are missing right now!”

“What was that!?”

For a moment, Yuumis’ chanting was interrupted.
Luru replied.

“We can’t find them! They probably aren’t in the village. Everyone is wondering if they went into the forest! That’s why I have to go find them! Please wait!”

Yuumis’ eyes widened in shock.
With this, Yuumis will definitely stop her magic, thought Luru.
However after thinking for a moment, what left Yuumis’ mouth was unexpected.

“…I’m sorry. I can’t stop. 『…Mysterious Wall{Arcanuma Wall}!』”

And like that, Yuumis completed her spell.
The mana she released spread across the entire village, and separated the inside of the village from the outside with a transparent barrier.
Spreading even into the sky, the hemispherical barrier probably blanketed almost all of the village.
The extremely large scale magic wall would probably protect the village from whatever invaders came.
And it also meant that the villages wouldn’t be able to leave the village either.

“Why!?”

Shouted Luru.
Yuumis looked apologetic, but gave a resolute reply.

“To protect the villagers… Please understand.”

“As in, why do they need to be protected…”

“Yesterday we mentioned the ruins, right? Today, Gran and I had entered there, but there weren’t any new discoveries to speak of. That’s why we left the ruins and were going to head back to the village… but immediately afterwards, the mural on the ruins started to glow, you see. A part of the wall started to crumble. And from there appeared a type of Magus Machine that we’ve never seen before…”

The term ‘Magus Machine’ referred to a mana-powered device that was either difficult, or impossible to produce with modern techniques. Normal devices that used mana were called ‘Magus Tools’.
Magus machines were primarily excavated from ruins, and the manufactured ones required great funds and techniques, but to find such things in a ruin near a backwater village like this…?
Luru tilted his head [in confusion].
Also the fact that the Magus Machines suddenly started operating was also extremely bizarre.
Yuumis continued.

“Right now Gran is fighting with those Magus Machines. I was going to do so as well, but as it turned out a few of them started flying into the air, you see. They weren’t really flying all that fast, but they managed to escape… They were headed towards the village. In terms of power, they weren’t really that big of a threat so I left those up Gran and headed here to protect the village… Look. Speak of the devil.”

Yuumis looked up into the sky.
When she did, she found Magus Machines flying about with their whirling propellers.
They weren’t all that big.
They were a little larger than a child, and smaller than an adult man, so they didn’t look that dangerous.
Built looking like large wasps with their wings plucked off, and a propeller stuck to their head.
Their leg portions were hollowed cylinders, and all of them were headed towards the village.

“…? I wonder what those cylinders are?”

Yuumis tilted her head to the side.
However, Luru knew what they were.
They were Magic Cannons{Magia Cannon}, a magic weapon produced during the war between the demons and humans.
Weapons that were invented so that even people without mana could use them.
He knew from a book that the only ones that remained in the modern era were the pistol models{Handgun Type} that were produced during their early days.
However, the ones equipped by the Magus Machines floating before their eyes were larger in diameter, and shouldn’t have existed in this era.

From this, Luru understood. That in other words, Yuumis was absolutely correct when she said that she had found an ancient demon ruin.
And what this meant was that the wasp-model Magus Machines floating before them were extremely dangerous.

Magus Machines were fundamentally multi-purpose machines created by the demon race.
Naturally their targets were set as humans, and if left to their own devices, they would continue to attack humans.
The machines that Yuumis said had escaped weren’t necessarily just these ones. There was also the possibility that they had flown to nearby villages.
Once he thought of that, it became obvious that he needed to stop them at the root.

If he remembered correctly, in Luru’s memory these types of Magus Machines would normally operate within a radii of a base, and you also stopped them from there.
In this case, that base would be none other than the ruin that Yuumis had found.
Luru had no memory of such a base being there, but if it were an extremely small one, it wouldn’t be strange if Luru didn’t know about it.

At any rate, he needed to immediately head to the ruin.

Thinking this, Luru spoke to Yuumis.

“Yuumis. There’s somewhere that I need to go immediately.”

“Haah?[Whaat?] What you need to do is go home to your mother or something. Leave this up to adventurers like Gran and I… Kya-!”

A huge bang resounded.

It was the attack from the Magia Canons of the wasps floating in the air.
Yuumis had been surprised by the first attack, but it seemed that she immediately understood that it was an attack, and calmly began concentrating on maintaining the barrier.
Fortunately, the barrier Yuumis created certainly seemed to have an effect, and didn’t even budge from the attack.
It seems that the t.i.tle ‘real adventurer’ wasn’t for sure.
Luru felt relieved at this fact.
It was relief that he could probably leave the village to Yuumis.
That’s why he said,

“I’m worried about Rusty and the others. I can’t just hide in the village[tremble here], you know… Yuumis, I’ll leave the vilalge to you.”

“…No matter what you say, I’m not going to release the barrier, you know? You’re a child. There’s nothing you can do anyway.”

Because it looked like she didn’t want to say it, but felt like she had to, for an instant Luru wasn’t sure how to respond.
However, it was a race against time now.
Luru decided to just to it, and decided to act overbearingly like.

“That’s fine. It’s not like I need your permission anyway. [I’m just going to do as I like, anyway.]”

Saying so, Luru touched the barrier.
As expected, his hand was stopped by a hard, and cold translucent wall, and he couldn’t leave the village.
Seeing this, Yuumis looked at him in pity and said,

“You might not know, but this type of barrier won’t let anyone pa.s.s without my permission. Of course, that includes you. That’s why it’s poi-… !?”

However, Yuumis saw something unbelievable.
Luru’s hand had completely pa.s.sed through the barrier that should have stopped everything.

“W-, why!? What’s going on!? I didn’t give you permission…”

To the panicking Yuumis, Luru apologetically said,

“Sorry. I overwrote your magic sequence. With this, your barrier is mine. …I was a little worried about its strength, so I reinforced it. I’ll be leaving the mana to you, Yuumis. With your mana, you’ll be able to last a whole day, right?”

“Overwrote the sequence!? There’s no way that you could do that! Not only that, but for one of my magic sequences to…”

Perhaps because she couldn’t believe what had happened, her hand touched the barrier as she tried to leave it.
Unfortunately, however, the barrier wouldn’t let her out.
It was natural. The barrier was already under Luru’s control.
No matter who they were, those on the inside wouldn’t be able to leave.

“Why can’t I pa.s.s through!? It’s my barrier!”

Even when she struck the barrier, there was no response at all.
And beyond it, stood Luru.
Trying to bring Luru back somehow, her face was stuck to the barrier as she continued to strike it.
But it was to no avail.

“Whyy!? Whyyyyy!?”

Seeing Yuumis who had already been reduced to a comedy skit, Luru stifled a laugh, and said to her,

“Sorry, Yuumis. I’m going to go search for Rusty and the others. I’ll stop the Magus Machines too.”

“Stop right thereee! Heeeyy!”

Screamed Yuumis, her face still plastered to the barrier.
However, Luru didn’t listen to her order.

At this rate, not just his friends, but the village would be in danger too.

Thinking this, Luru ran mana through his body.
His physical capabilities rose, and Luru ran from the village at a speed beyond humans.

Seeing this, Yuumis slid down the barrier to the floor, and said just a few words.

“…What the heck is that kid…?”

/Chapter 5 END