Chapter 329

“Hah…! Hah…! Hah…! C-CABBAGE ROLLS…!”

As, yes, cabbage rolls. Such an impressively motivating factor.

Finally, here we are in the Far East Wasteland… after two days of non-stop running.

And, well, it’s quite late into the night right now… Should be about nine o’clock. Tūs must already be asleep by now… Huh?

“Well what do we have here… I was wonderin’ what the big arcane energy was comin’ from, but it’s just you, huh?”

“Hey, long time no see, Tūs. Didn’t expect you to be awake.”

Tūs showed up out of nowhere, illuminated by a light source spell. His energy aura is as powerful as ever, and his muscles, man, his muscles…

Well, he’s NOT overwhelmingly powerful for me anymore, though. I’ve gotten much stronger over my adventures. Put on quite a bit more muscles, too.

“Cabbages…”

Pochi collapsed, her eyes comically spinning around.

“Heh, Pochi’s gotten strong, too. Y’all finally managed to do the Limit Breakthrough, eh?”

“Yeah. Had to travel to the past to find it.”

“Oh reeeallyyy… Well, makes sense that you’d find a few Philosopher’s Stones if you turned back time a bit. Makes it worth the trouble, too! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Gah, his voice is as loud as his body is big.

I mean, just look at him — he’s as tall as the giant Devils, and his muscles, man, his MUSCLES!

“So? What’re you doing here this time?”

“Not brushing us off as a ‘pain in the ass’ this time? That’s unexpected.”

“Hah, ’cause it looks like whatever you’re up to, it’s gonna be fun as hell. Written all over your face.”

What!? Did Pochi draw on my face again when I wasn’t looking!?

“I gotta infiltrate Regalia Castle because… reasons. I need all the extra muscle I can.”

“Meh, sounds like a hassle. I’m out–“

“–No, I’m not about to invite you along. I’m supposed to sneak in and get what I need, not wreck the whole place to the ground, you know.”

While I said that, I opened up the Storeroom and took out Lylia’s sealing Crystal.

Tūs promptly took a good look at the person sealed inside it.

“Well would you look at… Wait, is this Lylia?”

“The one and only! The fighter of the Holy Warriors!”

“HAHAHA! I haven’t seen her in ages! Yup, a bit older than I remember, but it’s definitely her! …Wait. Why the hell is she here?”

Tūs tilted his head and looked at me.

“She must’ve sealed herself in there to wait for the next Devil King’s resurrection.”

“You sure about that? Where’d you even get that idea from?”

“Well, she did already fight the Devil King alongside me once.”

Hearing me say that, Tūs went silent and put his hands on his head.

And then, a few seconds later, he clapped his hands together, pointed at me, and shouted,

“POER! I remember now — YOU’re Poer! HAHAHA! So you DID actually travel to the past! Gah, you a fool or what!? You fought the Devil King once, and you’re getting ready to fight him AGAIN!? It’s like you’re try’na get yourself beat up! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

And then he laughed. A lot. So much that he held his belly and rolled around on the ground — busting through the nearby boulders and shaking the earth.

God dammit… I did not expect to be made fun of this hard.

Well, no — Tūs IS powerful enough to say what he had just said.

And I mean… he doesn’t care much, if at all, for the civilized world, so it makes perfect sense that he’d say that.

“Yeah, that’s right! You got a problem with that, bomber head!?”

“HAHAHA! Nah, not really. Just thought you’d need to do better this time, y’know! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

He’s laughing about other stuff along with the main topic, isn’t he?

“Now it makes sense — the dog that won the Familiar Chalice was Pochi! It’s been so long, I hardly remember anything about it!”

“Shaddup! Hell, when we met back then, you were so GODDAMNED BEAUTIFUL — and look at you! How’d you go from THAT to… whatever you are now, anyway!?”

“With the MUSCLE TRAINING THEATER OF LOVE!”

“What the hell!? You’re saying that like an Elf bulking up his muscles is gonna make him grow up to six meters!”

“Dahahaha! It’s because MUSCLES ARE MAGIC!”

I AGREE! Damn it! Now I can’t argue with him anymore!

Tūs, smirking upon seeing me go silent, turned to take another look at Lylia’s face.

“So… when you said you needed extra muscle, you meant Lylia here, not me — but you do need my help now to get her out of this.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Half-listening to me as he looked elsewhere, Tūs proceeded to hit the Crystal with a little bit of arcane energy, deploying his magecraft formula onto it.

“Lessee here… Ain’t this the Statis Boundary magecraft?”

“You know it?”

“Know? I MADE it! Well, tried to make it. And I quit halfway through.”

“Whoa! For real!?”

“What, you don’t believe me? YOu know what… I never thought anyone would actually complete this annoying formula. Lylia could not, either… so whoever did it, they gotta be pretty persistent.”

So someone else managed to complete the implementation of a magecraft that Tūs gave up on? They must be quite well-versed in the arcane arts. An Elf, maybe? Well, a human may very well have pulled that off, too.

“Hmm, so… Belt-shaped arcane energy constrictions, two inputs at the same time… The original caster wouldn’t need any work to remove it, but someone else… well, they gotta try a special method… Am I gettin’ that right?”

“Right. That’s what I figured… with a friend’s help. Thought you and me working together would be good enough. Well?”

“So you’re planning to go to Regalia Castle with her… To do what, exactly?”

Now Tūs is looking pretty serious.

It’s quite clear that I must answer his question before I get an answer for mine.

“Kidnapping War Demon Emperor Vaas.”

“So you’re gonna go to the deepest, most heavily-guarded part… Lylia’s not gonna be enough. You’ll need more help.”

Tūs is acting surprisingly calm today.

“I also got three of my closest adventurer friends joining me, at least.”

“Are they strong?”

“I believe they are.”

“……That does NOT inspire confidence. At all.”

Now Tūs is looking quite irritated — full-on annoyed, even.

Man, the way he’s looking at me… It’s like he’s doubting whether or not I actually meant it when I said ‘believe’.

“You know that you might run into Gaspard in there, right? Think believing in your friends is gonna be enough? And I don’t see them anywhere — you gonna meet up with them in Regalia later or what?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Well, when you see them, you gotta bring them here. I’ll see how strong they actually are.”

“HUH!? You’re gonna do that!? YOU!? HELPING US!?”

Man, I never thought THE Tūs would be this cooperative for once…

“Look, my students are gonna kill each other — one former, one current. Might as well make sure the non-traitor wins, ’cause I’ll look bad otherwise.”

My jaw figuratively dropped to the ground. That’s how surprising it is — I’d never thought, in the whole two years spent with him, that he would ever say what he had just said.

“Well, y’all probably won’t win, though.”

“…Is Gaspard really THAT strong?”

As I’ve heard from Melchi and even Tūs himself so many times, he’s extremely strong — probably even too much for the combined force of me and Pochi at our current levels, Lylia, and the Silver trio.

It’s like… It’s like…

“–Well, you’re good enough to run away from him, at least.”

“Sounds like we’re treading on a VERY thin line here…”

“What do you expect? That place’s the Devilkin’s main base, not a walk in the park. Ishtar of the Black, Lloyd of the White, and Gaspard might all be there — y’all don’t have much chance of winning in the first place.”

It feels quite… new, seeing Tūs acting like this.

From what I’ve been told, that letter I gave to Gaston actually worked, leading to Tūs showing up to train the Royal Capital Magic Guardians… Was that what triggered his change of attitude?

Or is it because of the enemy I might be up against? Gaspard… Tūs’ former student, and my predecessor in this regard?

“What if…”

“Hmm?”

“What if I, Pochi, you, Bull, Lylia, and her Familiar Weldhun — that’s the Crimson King Ox, by the way — all fought together? Would we win against those three?”

Hearing that, Tūs went silent.

He proceeded to sit on a nearby boulder, pondered it over for a while, and scratched his head a few times.

When he finally got up, he gave me a threatening look–

“Hmm!?”

–And then unleashed his arcane energy.

“Well, to start figurin’ that out… I gotta see just how strong you are, Eternal Fool Asley.”

“Ngh…!!”

The arcane energy aura, shining green, is visible to the naked eye as it formed into a vortex, the same kind as I’m capable of making. The wave of arcane energy hit my face like a blast of wind — hell, it might as well be a storm.

Now this is the first time since surviving the era of antiquity — since killing the Devil King — that I’ve felt that something was STRONG.

Just the unleashing of his arcane energy was enough to cause a storm, and said energy carries with it an indescribable degree of heat and magnitude of sound… even though it’s not supposed to produce either of those.

Now, I remember quite well — that Tūs used to say that his strength was on the level of the Holy Warriors.

And he’s reached this level with sheer perseverance — Without relying on God or the title of the Holy Warriors. He’s made it this far on his own.

“C’mon, I’mma give you a little massage… With my full grip strength.”

Here it is. The Philosopher of the Far East is unleashing his power… The power that he’s only been building up and up since the era of the Devil King.