Merely one day after the incident with the demon ambush, Alissa, Ethan, and the rest of their party were already on board carriages bound for the royal capital. The survivors of the second tiers that had joined them for the expedition also boarded a carriage of their own, the youths looking depressed and dismayed at what had happened.
Alissa thought that the dismay they experienced was due to having seen how the demons so easily killed many of their compatriots in the battle, the bloodshed and deaths likely a shock to their youthful mentalities. Many of the youths broke down and cried during the walk back to the carriages back then, and some even looked like they were about to just plop themselves down and not care about anything anymore.
Ethan disagreed, as he pointed out how the youths were not only selected through demanding criterias before they were allowed to join the party, but also that each of them had backers that had suggested their inclusion in the first place. On top of that, every single one of them were volunteers, despite the stated dangers that they were bound to face.
He felt that while certainly part of the youths were there due to a sense of patriotism and courage, more than a few likely harbored delusions of grandeur in their heart as well. After all, attaining a class related to the [Heroes] was a method to instantly propel oneself into the eyes of the nobles and aristocrats at high places, as those classes had great importance for the locals.
Given how some of those second tiers had also fought recklessly against the demons, who were a tier above them, also made him think that some of them probably expected that the [Heroes] would swoop in to save them at crucial moments, like in stories. Or maybe they thought of themselves as the protagonist of that sort of story, hence the foolhardy attempt to take on someone far above their mettle on their own.
“That surprised me, honestly. I would have thought you would be the one who looked at the situation in a more… ideal light,” admitted Alissa during the rest stop they took later that night, when she and Ethan had a moment of relative privacy as long as they kept their voices low. “I’m supposed to be the paranoid and cynic between us, remember?”
“Maybe at first. Guess the honeymoon period’s over and done with, by now,” replied Ethan with a shrug of his shoulders. “The longer I’ve been here, the more I can’t help but notice that things weren’t like in my storybooks, you know?” he added. “Actually, amend that, it did kind of remind me of a couple of the stories I read, but those were the dark-ass ones where people got tossed to a crapsack world full of shitty people.”
“You think we might be in that sort of situation, then?” queried Alissa with some curiosity. It was an odd feeling, as despite how she was the one who was paranoid and cynical about their situation at first, she couldn’t help but feel that quite a few of the people she had run into were genuine and up front with her. People she wouldn’t mind calling friends, in different circumstances.
“I don’t know, really. The beef that the demons supposedly have with the humans are definitely real. Those ones we ran into shot first and stabbed second, not even asking questions,” answered Ethan with a shake of his head. “On top of that, the way some of them laughed like a maniac after killing someone… I hate to admit it, but the enmity between the sides is definitely for real here.”
“Similarly, while I’m not that close with the boys in our group, I can’t help but feel that at least old Henri is sincere with us,” he continued his train of thought. “He’s one of the most powerful people in the kingdom, as far as we know, so if he is truly sincere and wasn’t just being a really good actor… that sincerity might mean a lot.”
“I get the same feeling with Nadine and the rest,” said Alissa as she nodded, as she knew all too well what Ethan meant with his words. If the people they ran into had been openly manipulative or otherwise dodgy with them, it would have been far easier for Ethan and Alissa to keep them at arm’s length. Instead, they were met with sincerity which made it harder for them to harden their hearts. “You know… going home in one piece still comes first, but if I can, I really do want to help them out.”
“I get the feeling, Allie. Question is, how do we go about that? I imagine helping them win this war of theirs would keep at least the people we know mostly safe, unless they’re really unlucky,” said Ethan with a shake of his head. “But it doesn’t really change matters that much in the long run, doesn’t it? It’ll just return the demons and humans back to parity and the war will keep going later on.”
“Come to think of it, from what I read in the history books they had, both the demons and the humans had fallen to only having barely a third of their original territory multiple times in the past, but neither side ever managed to push further,” noted Alissa as she remembered some of the things she read in her spare time. “It’s like someone didn’t want the war to ever end, if you ask me. Every time one side comes close to winning, they start losing.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Yeah, it feels staged. By all rights, enmity this strong, that had already lasted this many generations, should have come to an end one way or another long ago. You mostly searched their history about the [Heroes] before us and the wars, right?” Ethan asked, to which Alissa nodded. “I’ve been checking out things that were more on the side of rumors and fables. Some of them are pretty interesting, when you interpolate them with the situation we are seeing.”
“Do tell.”
“I only saw a couple notes of it amongst the stuff I read, but some of them said that a couple kings in the past tried to push further into demon territory after the [Heroes] won the war and returned to where they came from,” said Ethan rather gravely. “Both times, those kings fell from grace in pretty strange ways, leading to the rumor saying that they had been punished by the gods for, get this, overstepping their bounds.”
“If that’s true, then it’s like someone doesn’t want this whole mess of a war to ever end,” commented Alissa as she mulled over what Ethan just told her. “That would be… ridiculous though… Why would gods be interested in keeping what amounted to an eternal war going on forever? I mean… What's in it for them? There has to be a reason, no?”
“Well, like I said, it was rumors in an obscure book, so I can’t say whether there’s any truth in it or not either,” shrugged Ethan as he replied to Alissa. “That said, I can think of some reasons why some gods might want to keep an eternal war going. For one, what if they’re powered by the blood and suffering of their believers? Keeping a war going would get them that in plentiful supply.”
“Alternatively, they might just be bored up there and set the whole thing up for entertainment for all we know. Or maybe the enmity that the locals here have with the demons also affect them? I’m not sure, honestly,” he admitted. “All I know is that I feel like this whole setup sort of felt… artificial. Staged. Directed, even, if you get what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. Did you remember what those demons we fought look like, by the way?” asked Alissa back all of a sudden.
“Yeah, why?”
“Tall, lanky, pointy ears, aren’t they sort of like the elves so often seen in your stories? I guess these ones are nowhere as pretty, though, and had that sort of weird coloration,” she suggested. “We haven’t seen the other types of demons yet, but what they were described like also reminded me of some other races from your stories. Think that’s a coincidence?”
“Hard to say, honestly. I think it might just be what the demons look like, rather than them being made based on our fantasy tales. Don’t you think it’d be way too much effort either way to mold the looks of a whole race just for that?” countered Ethan with a doubtful shake of his head. “On the other hand, I’ve once read a story where the protagonist returned back from a fantasy world… and became a fantasy author who wrote about his experiences, so can’t discount that scenario either.”
“That said… assuming the worst case is true, that those… gods engineered this whole war for their own purposes or whatnot, can we do anything about it?” asked Alissa with some wonderment. “That fight with the demons had been a wake up call, I think. We have nowhere near the ability to do things the way we want yet. We can’t even keep people safe, for fuck’s sake!”
“Reminds me of what old Henri always said when he taught us, honestly? Do you remember? When he’d rant about how power isn’t everything, but most everything needs power to do,” said Ethan in turn with a slightly wistful smile. “We’re just still too weak at the moment. We can barely keep ourselves safe, much less others. Had any of those fourth tier demons turned our way things would have gotten ugly, I think.”
“You got a point. In the end, this place is all about power, isn’t it?” noted Alissa with a nod. “At the moment, our status as [Heroes] might let us get away with minor requests as long as the kingdom keeps paying lip service to it, but we don’t really have the ability to make any calls, don’t we? We’re just some teenagers well out of our comfort zone, here. They have no reason to really give us that much heed.”
“I bet they’ll change their tone once we’re able to match old Henri one on one, or better,” suggested Ethan even as he showed his agreement to Alissa’s words with a nod. “For that, though, we’ll need to play by their tune for a while more. I think old Henri said that they’d try to arrange for another dungeon as soon as they can to get us to the third tier, no? That’d be a start.”
“Yeah, he did say that,” affirmed Alissa. “He also said that we should be closer to his power level once we’re around midway up the third tier, so that’d still be a while further, even after we hit that benchmark,” she added. “Do you think they’d listen more to what we have to say about things by then? Or think they’ll still be obstinate about it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Ethan with a shake of his head. “By the time we’re even or better with old Henri when it comes to power, if they try to make us do something we don’t agree with, I’d like to see how they’d try to enforce that. It’s not like we have anyone we truly care about in this world, so they can’t hold someone hostage or the like.”
“And if they prove to be too stubborn or set in their ways, we could either try to find another way to go home, other than the one they told us about. There’s one way to go home, so there might be others, for all we know, no?” he asked as he forged on. “One thing more power in this situation grants us is that it would allow us to stop being pawns and become players on the board, instead.”
The two mulled over what they talked about for the rest of the trip back to the royal capital, their thoughts meandering as they journeyed. Along the way they received news that the area of the frontline they had been near faced a demon incursion a couple days after they left, one that the defenders repelled, but not without losing thousands of their numbers in the process.
As Alissa and Ethan listened to Sir Inolet reading the news out loud to them, both of them couldn’t help but fidget with a desire for more power, power that would allow them to do more than just sit helplessly like they were doing.