Tales of a Seductress

TOAD – Chapter 60

Although I had a task set to me by the demon king, I spent most of my time reading from the journal of the hero. Most of the books in that library were dry and boring, but that one was filled with information that left me constantly in shock. The hero had come from my world, or at least a world very similar to mine. I wasn’t going to assume that it was my world. First of all, my world had no magic in it. If his theory was correct, then shouldn’t real magic had been appearing in my world before I left. Then again, what had brought me to this world in the first place? Maybe that was the first sign of magic?

I looked through his journal with all of my attention, hoping that I could find out answers to that question, and many like it. He seemed to be a philosopher at heart though, and while he could always come up with interesting questions, his answers always left just as many questions. Some of those theories closely reflected my own. He also seemed to think that the mana in this world was dwindling, although he theorized it was being replaced with energy.

I wasn’t so sure about that. I couldn’t imagine a world that didn’t have energy. It was a world where all matter was controlled by the laws of mana. What were the laws of mana? How did they differ from energy other than the existence of magic? He wasn’t able to answer that question. He stated that a world where mana solely existed was unobservable because the world already existed with both mana and energy. It would be as easy as studying the fourth dimension. We could conceptualize it but never see it.

These were the parts of his works that frustrated me. This philosopher hero was kind of an annoying guy, and it was apparent that he thought pretty highly of himself. Well, he was summoned to another world and declared as the most important person who would save that world, so maybe it made sense that he would grow a bit full of himself.

A lot of what he wrote was just a journal though. Although he pondered the nature of this world, he also just explained what happened during his journey. He hadn’t started this journal immediately after coming to this world. He had spent nearly a year merely leveling and learning about this world before encountering a single demon. If I compared that to what I had accomplished after a year of being in this world, he seemed almost lacking.

From what I could tell, he had been in this world for about five years and had chronicled his time in it for the final four. It took him about a year to max the 1^st class, another year for the 2^nd, and two years to bring him through the third and into the fourth, where he reached level 100 around the time he faced the dragon god.

He had started this journal sometime into his second year, after already experiencing so many hardships. It began with him leaving his country of origin, a country is known as Briarstock. I was familiar with the name of the country thanks to my princess training under Nova, but I didn’t know much more than that it existed, and was far larger than Nidia. The hero seemed to do a tour of the country for the next year, learning things from each country, meeting nobles, and most importantly, forming alliances.

The idea seemed to be that the hero would be used as an idol to encourage the other nations of the human realm to unite. At that time, the humans were still fractured, and there was as much infighting as there was fighting against the demons. There was no surprise that every year, they were losing ground against the united demon realm. With the fear of annihilation and the hope given by the hero, they were able to unite the kingdoms. At that point, he was only around level sixty when he finally went out to fight the demons.

Rather than like the stories, where he easily op’d them all, most of his entries during his third year were discussing the fear, frustration, and anger he felt as he fought alongside his friends, and many of them died. There was much less introspection, and the tone of his entries became much more guarded and depressing. Despite the odds though, he continued to get stronger and fight against the enemy. In the third year of the war, he finally managed to push the demons of the continent, reclaiming it all for the human realm.

It was after this victory that the tone of his writing seemed to change again. He grew increasingly more cynical, and he even started questioning the humans. The lords and ladies had been ecstatic over his victories, showering him with adoration and praise. However, they had also let their faults start to show. Now that they were no longer fighting to survive, they started to become greedy.

The hero had become tired of fighting. He had lost too much. He wanted to end the war with the demons, keeping this continent and leaving the demons for that one, but the humans had grown wealthy on the land and resources conquered by the hero, and they wanted him to cross the ocean and hit them where they hurt. He hadn’t explained how they had convinced or forced him to do it, but the next entry acted as if crossing the ocean had already been decided.

A massive campaign was launched, and the hero who was by that point level 90 and one of the strongest in the world, launched an attack against a demon port and spent a year of brutal fighting to gain a foothold on the demon continent, which is the territory they held until this day. The cost of living was extreme, but the hero’s entries had become less emotional about it, and more like reporting numbers.

We managed to take Driar’s Point today. Ten casualties. Tomorrow, we will try to press forward. As long as we can take the mine, they will send reinforcements.

It was that kind of writing. The energy and life had slowly been beaten out of him. I knew how he had felt. I had a similar relationship with this world. I had come here optimistically and full of hope. Even though I had experienced so many hardships, I had thought that I could achieve miracles. My path might have been drastically different from the hero’s, but in many ways, we’re a lot alike. We both had become disenfranchised and even numb to everything this world threw at us.

By the end of the year, he was downright distrustful of the humans and even seemed to suggest that there was no difference between humans and demons. He had once been on the defensive, taking back territory that belonged to humans and expelling invaders who were under their control and enslave. It was really easy to see them as the enemies at that time.

However, once crossing the ocean and ending up on the demon continent, he had switched from a defender to an aggressor. He started to be on the other side of the battle, taking land away from demon families and innocent demons. He was oppressing them. It was only reasonable that he would start to empathize with them as well, and realize that the picture the humans had put in his mind was only a deception.

In the fifth and final year, his tone started to become livelier again though. A lot of this seemed to stem from the elves. He had seemingly fallen in love with an elvish woman, and there were quite a few entries chronicling his relationship with her. This had caused him to grow more sympathetic toward the demonic side, and he even started to question the intentions of the humans. This ended rather brutally, with a flood of monsters destroying the elf tribe, and it wasn’t clear whether his lover lived or died, but knowing what I knew of monsters, I could imagine her state if she had lived.

This was when he had finally changed for the last time. He became extremely set in his words.

I believe that the problem with this world fundamentally comes from mana. I had once theorized that rather than a battle between evil and good, it was a battle between mana and energy. After everything I have seen, I still believe that. However, mana is evil. Mana infects everyone and gives them the power they aren’t meant to have. Animals infected with power become monsters, who do horrible things to the people of this world. Demons and humans infected with mana become monsters too, but they aren’t the kind of monsters that are easy to see. It’s an infection that can only be seen on the inside. I have many magicians as friends. They would likely not be too kind to hear my assessment. However, a magician doesn’t contain more mana, they just manipulate it. To absorb mana… to become evil… it’s a very different thing.

Once again, I wasn’t sure if I believed what he was writing about. I absorbed lots of mana. Was I really evil? I didn’t want to hear an answer for that. I decided to keep reading instead.

To save this world, I must stop the mana from flowing. That is the only way. I have determined that the dragon god was the conduit, the method that brings mana to this world. They are right to call him a god, as his presence is what allows this vicious cycle to continue, for this world to be maintained. He’s been growing old and sick though, and the mana has been weakening as a result. Even gods must die one day.

To keep the mana flowing, reports have come that he plans to pass over his godhood to the demon king. The demon king has spent a lifetime sucking up to the dragon god, and now I know why. He wants to become a new god. If they are allowed to succeed, then the demons will gain untold power. They will surge forth, take back what the humans conquered, and the cycle will only repeat itself.

I… hate myself for many of the things I have done. I have killed countless demons, and even slaughtered innocents. It is this world; this world filled with mana is to blame. To fix it, I must ride out and stop the ceremony. No new god can be born. I will break the cycle. The demons will decline and go extinct. The monsters will perish. This will become a human world. If there is some god responsible for my summoning to this world, then I am sorry. This is all I can do for this world.

To whoever reads this, burn it after. I do not have the strength to burn away my history, but these words should burn. No one should know what I did or why I did it. I will call upon all of my resources. Every human who owes me a favor will come and fight in this final battle. They will believe we are fighting to defeat the demons, but I have a far more important battle in mind. I fight for the fate of the world. The dragon god and the demon king must die. No gods must be born. Ever again.

That was the last entry. The rest of the book ended there, and the hero just disappeared from history. All that I knew was that they succeeded in killing the dragon god. Mana didn’t dissipate as quickly as he might have hoped, but we were living in a world that was slowly losing mana. As much as I knew, it left me with so much more I wanted to know. I wanted to know his connection to Nidia, the country that ended up with the dragon god’s cock. I wanted to know why the demon king survived. I wanted to know about that final battle. Most of all, I wanted to know what his fate was. In some ways, I saw his fate and my own as similar.

“Will I have the same fate as him?” I wondered out loud. “Will I change history only to disappear in its wake?”

It was a terrifying thought, but it seemed all too likely, knowing me.

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