It took a couple of minutes until I was healed enough to satisfy Lillia. By the time she was finished the pain was almost completely gone, just a slight dull ache to remind me of my mistake. We gathered our belongings and got on the move again. We had lost a lot of time due to the unexpected encounter and we now had a lot of ground to cover with less time that the girls had planned. This meant picking up the pace.
It wasn’t easy going over the uneven forest floor, with a heavy bag and we were all a little worn out from having three fights back to back. Then again, if we didn’t make up the lost time, we would have to find somewhere new to camp for the night. The girls didn’t want this, they had carefully planned all of our camping spots in relatively safe areas for being out in the wild. Camping somewhere unknown greatly increased the risk of being attacked in the night.
After about an hour and half of trekking at a punishing pace we made it to the far side of the forest. Thanks to Altria’s scouting skills, we made it through without attracting the attention of any more monsters. It was nice to be out of the forest, it was easier to walk for one thing, but we still had a long way ahead of us. Not having the time to stop for a proper lunch, we made a brief stop once we had put enough distance between us and the tree line. We only paused long enough to have a drink and get out some salted meats and bread before we set out once again eating as we moved.
The sun beat down on us as we crossed the grassy plain. The ground rising slowly towards distant mountains. We were starting to lose the light by the time we eventually made it to the planned camp spot. We threw up the tents and built a fire in a hurry. Once we had set up camp we could all finally rest and the four of us sat around the fire, glad to finally be able to take the weight off our feet.
“How are the ribs?” Altria asked as she sat down next to me.
“Better now thank you. I’ll try not to do something so stupid in future.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much, Lillia was just worried. You saw Serin on the back foot and you stepped in to help, like she said, you created the opening for bringing it down. You just need to work on your distancing and timing, but that will come with practice.”
“Don’t worry, you get plenty of that over the coming days.” Added Serin as she sat across the fire from us.
“I just I hope I don’t get hurt in the process.”
“Just be careful, and we’ll all do our best to look out for you, but no recklessness.” Lillia explained as she sat down with the rest of the group, passing around a wine skin.
Lillia took a seat next to me so I was sandwiched in between her and Altria. As Lillia passed on the wine skin and everybody seemed to be in a good mood. I decided to ask some questions of the group.
“I was wondering, have any of you ever seen the demon lord?”
I thought that being among three of the Adventurer’s guild’s ranked adventures, that it would be unlikely if one of them hadn’t actually spied them in the flesh.
“Well…” Lillia answered eventually. “None of us have ever seen them. No one that has ever lived to tell the tale.”
“So, it’s like that. Do you have any idea what powers they possess or what weaknesses they have?”
The group all looked at each other before finally Lillia answered yet again.
“No, we don’t.”
“What is the plan to beat them then?”
“Well, we’re told that we need a summoned hero to do so, but all of the summons so far haven’t been strong enough to stand a chance.”
“Not strong enough how?”
“Well most have never made it far enough to confront them themselves. Most have gotten themselves killed in the process of gaining the strength that they needed.”
“Most? Have any of the summoned heroes actually challenged the demon lord?”
“As far as I am aware…. None have made it that far.”
That was concerning to say the least, but for now I had no getting out of this task I’d been given so I pressed on with my questions.
“That’s pretty terrifying… Okay, so what is your plan for me?”
The group all looked at each other in silence for a little while once again. This time it was Serin’s turn to speak up.
“Well, and this is something that we have all spoken to each other about for great length. We decided that we would band together. We would make sure that the next summoned hero from either Lillia or Altria, would have our utmost to help them gain the skills they needed and when the time came face the demon lord with them. For the time being this means taking on smaller quests and hunting down lower ranking members of his army.” She told me.
“That’s all very well and good, but how will we ever know what we are up against? How can we prepare to battle something we have no idea about?” I asked still not satisfied.
“That’s why we are targeting the lower ranking members of their army. Most adventurers simply spend all day killing off monsters terrorising the local area. There are plenty of quests that go unnoticed, mostly because people think that they are too dangerous and want nothing that might involve themselves with the demon lord. That’s where we can come in, if we can take any of the low-ranking members prisoner or extract information from them, then we have a much greater chance of finding out what power they possess.”
“If all of this went to plan, what do you think the alliance would do?” I pressed.
“Probably nothing. There is no way that any of the nobles would put their lives on the line. This is for the heroes to tackle.”
“Right… What do you think would happen if a hero did manage to gain enough power to defeat the demon lord, what do you think would happen then?”
“Well everyone would rejoice.” Sein replied.
“After that. What about the hero? Do you think the alliance would allow someone that was able to overcome the demon lord roam free, or would they destroy their relic before they had the chance to use the heart?”
All three girls looked at each other once again, but it was clear from the glance that only Lillia would be able to give any kind of answer.
“I suppose I should be answering this.” Said Lillia. “I’ve told each of you here part of the story about my previous summon, the hero before Theo here. Most of you know that he left his duties when it first became known to him just how much of a task it would be to defeat the demon lord, perhaps even impossible.” She paused for a moment.
“I managed to hide this fact from the guild masters for quite some time, but eventually his secret was given away. I begged my farther, one of the heads of the guild council to buy me time to change his mind. He promised me so, but it would never be. The moment that I caught up with the poor boy was the moment that they shattered his relic. The timing was too perfect, it was a message to me at the cost of his life. He died in my arms. So no, I don’t think they would let any hero that defeated the demon lord go free. I think the first thing they would do once their victory was assured, would be to destroy their relic.”
“That has been one of my concerns since Liz told me part of that story.” I answered.
“Can you be so sure? I know they have done things in the past, but this is….” Questioned Serin.
“The thought might have never crossed your mind Serin, but remember what happened to the armies when the nobility fled back to the cities. They didn’t even offer them shelter.” Lillia added.
Altria responded this time. “As you know most of the other summoners only treat the heroes as tools, they don’t even aide in their training, happy in the knowledge that they can always call another. Do you really think any of the guild masters would allow someone with greater power than the demon lord and perhaps even a slight grudge against them wander free?”
Serin thought for a moment before finally responding. “No, I suppose not.”
Finally asking the most important question, and good to know this conversation will continue. Obviously I am not Theo, but if I was my next question would be "So why should I do any of this when the Guild will kill me no matter the result? f*ck them." Possibly without the expletive. Followed by "how can you be sure this Demon Lord exists if nobody alive has seen them? That's just conjecture."
I do wonder as well if one so far unmentioned component of the summoning is to get "fresh blood" into the gene pool. The male nobility are in hiding and will have no interest in mingling with the commoners, whereas 80% of the commoner men have been eradicated. Unless the gender ratio was heavily balanced towards men before the conflict (however long ago that first started up), that's a lot of women who will end up not having children and a population crash as a result.
Lillia, Altria, and Jules were all confirmed non-virgins, and Serin explained why she was still a virgin as a daughter of nobility. Lillia in particular has clearly had intercourse with at least one of her previous summons, almost certainly her last one who she appears to have had at least some romantic feelings for based on what has been said to this point. Altria is less certain without having a summon at the moment (on a side note it would be great to know how she is managing to avoid their compulsion/means of forcing her to do it) but has probably shared with Lillia in the past, and Jules is in a position where she will interact with the summoned. Possibly that trio aren't even aware of it being a potential goal of the Guild, but it wouldn't surprise me. Yes there are female summons, but since most summoners don't interact with their summoned after dropping them at the guild it would be easy enough to kill them off without notice and try again.
I'm probably overthinking it, but if any of that at all ends up being true (assuming people from different worlds are able to breed of course) then I wonder if the "Demon Lord's heart" is something societal rather than a physical thing. As in the hero allowed to stay is one who "grasps the heart" of women by impregnating them. Well, when I write it down now the idea seems a bit stretched, but it made sense in my mind!
Nice to see lots of thoughts on this. Only thing I can say without big spoilers is Liz answered most of the Altria question re not being forced to summon yet and a lot of it is to do with the catkin nature. They won't force her until they have no choice, until it become an issue with the alliance.
@ohhdearme Well you are doing a great job of drip-feeding the information. A lot of the time the author either reveals too much at once, or not enough at all. You've got that balance down pretty well I think, there is enough mystery that I want to keep reading to see what happens.
Lillia seems to have now told him everything she knows, but my gut instinct feels that there is still more she is keeping hidden. She doesn't appear to have any malevolence towards him and it feels like she does genuinely care about his safety (even if she isn't very good at doing it during the training). Given how much she has obscured to this point, from the details about the summoning to her carelessness in battles (not making sure the area was safe to summon in, not telling him about the monster attracting potion, not paying attention to the wolves, etc.), I do think that he is acting much more trusting towards her than he should be. Information is power, as the saying goes, and the bear hunts were only successful because Serin was there (for some reason I keep wanting to call her Serina, damn my typo-filled mind); if it had just been the three of them Lillia would have once again gone in without a plan and he would have died as the only vanguard.
Actually, and this is just coming to my mind as I type, I now wonder about Lillia's state of mind. They've said that most summoners just leave their charges at the guard, but rather than that being from negligence I wonder if it is more to protect their own minds. The summoners know they have to effectively murder a person to summon them, and even at a distance that is a heavy weight to bear. Perhaps the others are left at the guild because the summoners just can't hold the lives of the summoned when they know they will almost certainly die anyways, and they probably have instructions not to get too close to the summoned because of that. In that scenario Lillia has a much greater feeling of responsibility towards the summoned than her fellows, but that would break most people and is probably why everyone else just leaves them at the guild. Lillia's mind is then probably on the verge of breaking because she keeps going in a circle of kill to summon>raise and watch them die>kill to summon. It would at least explain away some of her carelessness, because despite her intentions her mind isn't completely there. The death of her last summon clearly had such a horrible effect on her and so if anything were to happen to him she might break down entirely.
It also suggests that throwing herself into s*x with him so easily is a way of coping psychologically. I don't doubt the erotic side-effect of the healing had a part to play in the first time, but it was likely it just overloaded her. Maybe she has s*x to forget what she has done, but her responsibility doesn't allow her to do it with anyone but the summoned (because how can she take pleasure for herself when she is sending him off to die?). She clearly seems to have fallen in love with her previous summon to some extent, so breaking the relic was not just a way to punish/warn her but also an attempt to get her to disassociate herself from her summons going forward. Perhaps her family found out about their relationship and that is the real reason why the relic was broken; had the relationship not been revealed he would have been allowed to rejoin the cause, but Lillia had to reveal it in desperation thinking that by doing so it would help convince her father. In which case she also knows that she is the reason why he died and that would certainly create a giant hole in her heart which, combined with her sense of responsibility, would lead to her throwing herself at the next summon in a desperate attempt to fill that summon, and why she tried to keep everything hidden as a way to try and protect him. By doing that she has created a dependence on him that normally would be avoided. That of course would mean her current feelings for him are not genuine, something that would be remedied as the story progresses, and would explain why she is not forthcoming about almost everything that he (and by extension us) wants/needs to know.
That then leads to two (maybe three) important questions: 1) Why did she suddenly have to go to the capital and meet her family, where she almost certainly met her father who killed her last love in such a gruesome way? What did she say to him about this summoning, and what did he say to her? That's something critical that he needs to know, but Lillia is probably desperate to not reveal that information out of her desire to protect him. She will likely not tell him unless he does something drastic like threaten to just leave since he will end up being killed anyway, and her dependence on him will force her to reveal it. 2) How did her father know when she met back up with her previous summon? He waited until they were together when breaking the relic would have the maximum effect on her. So clearly they have a way to monitor either the summoned or Lillia herself. How do they do that, and are they constantly monitoring the group as their quest progresses? Does Lillia know about that capability, and does her father about all their activities/dependence because of it? 3) If Lillia really is on the verge of completely breaking down, what do they do when a summoner is no longer able to fulfill their task? How do they transfer the responsibility to somebody else if the summoner dies or becomes otherwise incapacitated? And if hypothetically Lillia does break down and is unable to summon anymore, what will they do with her after giving somebody else that power? Do they let her live and recover, freed from the burden, or will they kill her because they can't let anybody think they can get out of doing it and pass it on to somebody else?
Mind, this is basically just mental diarrhea so I am probably way off on everything!
@Melicans Thank you. Glad the information doesn't seem painfully slow in coming out. I've been trying to avoid large info dumps and add it as it comes up in the story, as the characters open up. I can't really add much here as again the info isn't all going to come in one go and I think/hope it will be better to see it as the story plays out. Hopefully it won't be too frustrating. I hope this isn't an annoying response, but if I add any more it will end up being heavy spoilers.
@ohhdearme No way is it annoying! My wife may enjoy spoilers but I can't stand them. I just like speculating.