Chapter 15. Chatting in the Darkness

This Tainted Land in particular was inside the mountain. It appeared to be composed of caves, and while the darkness of the depths would add up to the difficulty of exploring such a system, it wasn’t impossible to keep going deeper as with a simple light spell the road ahead could be seen. So far, we hadn’t seen anything unusual, or anything dangerous, which meant that other people already cleared some of the way—likely the ones that went in right before us—since even at the very entrance of most Tainted Lands, monsters transformed by the power of Darkness and Hellfire would already be pouncing on you.

“Those kids from before seem to have some skills. There’s hardly any signs of combat around here,” Bo’guth said, seemingly thinking something similar to me.

I didn’t reply right away to what he said as I had another doubt in my mind. “Are the Tainted Lands and Holy Places of Power in this world the same as they were in ours?”

“Oh yeah, they’re exactly like those—some even harder to traverse in some cases,” he said before putting a hand under his red chin. “Though… nobody has seen a single ‘Holy Place of Power’ in this world after five years.”

“What? There’s only Tainted Lands?” I asked, turning my head to look with surprise at the large demon that barely fit inside the caves.

He nodded. “A lot of people from both this world and ours don’t quite understand why that is, since they were supposed to be natural lands in our world, so logic would dictate that if they were natural, then all forms should be here.”

That only means that there’s no power from the Holy Gods here… or any other God besides Salrak. “Are there any guesses as to why that is?”

“Well… some people—particularly from the countries you had influence in—believe that there’s only Tainted Lands because you were defeated and the Dark Lord replaced everything with a vision of His world.”

“If that was the case, then the world would be covered in darkness and hellfire, and there would only be demons and monsters,” I countered, stopping for a moment to throw a light spell deeper into the caverns, which revealed only more cave ahead and nothing else.

“That is exactly what people say as to why that can’t be,” Bo’guth agreed with a nod. “A lot of my people simply believe that the clash between you and the Dark Lord damaged the world so much that our Lord decided to create a whole new world for everyone, and that since this is a creation of His, then these are nothing more than the marks of his presence, watching over us.”

“Is that so…” I trailed off, not really wanting to confirm nor deny what the demon believes.

However, the demon softly chuckled and I could feel his gaze on me. “But I think you would be the one that could really tell us what is real and what is fake.”

I hummed, throwing another light spell deeper into the cave. It was true that I knew what happened. I could tell him that I killed his God and that by doing so I also doomed everyone in our world, including myself. But to admit that to a heavily armed demon in the middle of a Tainted Land could create trouble for me.

“Well? Are you going to—”

“I see something up ahead,” I interrupted Bo’guth before he could press me more on the issue as a shadow moved when my light spell passed by it.

“Hm?” Bo’guth followed up, trying to see if there was something as well. “I don’t see—” he paused, focusing on the cave before chuckling in a low tone. “Allow me.”

I turned to look at him as he pulled out the large hammer. After a few moments the hammer started glowing with a dim red fire which then turned to a bright flame. I looked at the shadow. It reacted to the fire on the hammer by turning its glowing red eyes this way before a jagged mouth opened, screeching as it rushed our way. I readied myself with the sword, not worried about the quickly moving shadow as I should be able to split it in half once it was in range, but Bo’guth moved before it was close to us.

“Be free in the warm embrace of Hell!” he shouted, throwing his hammer at the incoming shadow.

It flew as if it had been launched by a ballista, leaving only a fiery red line in the air as it closed the distance in the blink of an eye, landing squarely on the shadow’s face. A loud explosion from both the impact and the magic on the hammer followed up, creating a shockwave that shook the ground under us and illuminated the cave walls around us.

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Bo’guth turned to look at me, excitement on his face. “What do you think of that?”

I didn’t quite share his feeling of excitement, and I couldn’t say I was particularly impressed by it, but I could agree it was quite the powerful throw. However… “Isn’t it foolish to throw your weapon away like that?”

“Oh?” he replied, tilting his head to the side before looking at the fiery mess in the cave. He chuckled again and stretched his open palm at it. “Watch this.”

After a couple of seconds, the hammer suddenly flew back out of the fire, leaving a similar red line in the air, only that this time it was because of the heat and not the magic in it. Just as fast as it had been thrown before, the hammer landed on the demon’s hand, who looked at me with a wide smirk.

“Pretty cool, right?” he said, putting the hammer on his back again. “This is a spell created by the people of this world. Apparently, it makes the hammer users feel like ‘superheroes’ or something like that.”

“‘Superheroes’…?” I said, humming without really acknowledging the thing he said about it being cool.

“Yeah, they’re the kind of person that mostly children look up to. Although the ones that usually go around calling themselves like that are the ones that only show on cameras, keep their identity hidden with a strange outfit—even for this world—and just do some small things; like helping people in trouble, only to disappear right after without actually changing anything,” Bo’guth elaborated while scratching one of his horns. “But they sometimes do come up with cool spells.”

“I still think it would be better to keep a hold of your weapon and use another kind of spell instead. Who is to say that the enemy isn’t just going to hold on to it and force you to be unarmed?” I continued, throwing another light spell down the cave.

Bo’guth simply chuckled and shook his head. “You are just jealous that you don’t know how to do this spell.” He pulled out a large phone from who-knows-where, and pressed a few things on it to create the glowing painting. “Look at it! This cost me about ten thousand dollars to learn!”

I turned to look at the glowing painting in his phone. The first thing I saw was the name of the spell, [Weapon Recall (C)] and a description that read:

‘Never lose your weapon in combat! No matter what happens, you’ll be able to bring back your weapon! Straight to your hand!’ and in very small text under it it said: ‘Skill Book only available for Magic Power ranks C and higher. No refunds once purchased.’

The one thing that caught my attention was the Skill Book part. “What is a Skill Book?”

The demon put away the large phone and chuckled. “It is a pretty interesting development that the people of this world made with the help of ours. It’s an artifact that allows certain kinds of knowledge to be quickly learned by just infusing your mana into it.”

“So nobody teaches you spells? And you don’t learn to do it yourself?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I thought about how that would work.

“Exactly! It’s amazing, but… most of them are very expensive, and they all have restrictions to who can learn what, so you have to be careful with what you buy, since they won’t give you your money back if you can’t use it,” he replied and I could tell from a side look that he was doing a wry smile.

I hummed, thinking about the possibilities and downfalls of such a thing. Sure it makes it easier to learn certain spells, but they likely won’t grow and you won’t know how to actually do them, which means that whoever is behind them is the only one that has the knowledge of magic.

“I bet you’re dying to get a spell like that,” Bo’guth provoked with a smirk on his face. “Too bad you don’t have a dime on your name.”

I could feel my eyebrow twitching, and a big part of me felt it unacceptable that a demon would dare look down on me. I used a bit more power on the next light spell that I threw down the cave, and with the light it produced, I managed to catch a glimpse of another one of those dark beings.

Bo’guth readied himself to repeat the same thing he did before, but instead of allowing him to get away with it, I gripped the greatsword on my shoulder, infusing both the blade and my body with magic, and with a full body turn, I launched the blade with just as much strength as the demon had used with his hammer, sending the sword flying in the air, which created a whistling sound as it cut the air.

The dark being at the end of the cave didn’t even have time to react, as it only turned its head to look at the incoming sword, only to explode a second later in a mess of darkness as the blade blew through it and embedded itself on a wall.

“See? Now you’re going to have to go fetch it,” the demon mocked, shaking his head.

While it was true that it would be foolish to throw away your weapon like that, I wasn’t so foolish as to do it simply because a demon provoked me. I had already infused my mana on the weapon, so I stretched my hand just like the demon had done before, and I commanded the mana from both my body and the weapon to reunite.

Almost instantly, the large blade lodged on the wall flew out of it, bringing a piece of the cave down with it as the sword came directly to my hand at an even faster speed than Bo’guth’s hammer had done before, making a crisp clasping sound once it landed in my hand. I turned to look at the demon, who was looking down at me with widened eyes, and I couldn’t help but smirk at his incredulous face before I kept going down the cave.

After a couple of seconds, the demon cackled. “Just what you’d expect from the Hero of the Holy Gods!”