Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 350: Peace (1)

The master of Hell—the sovereign above all demonic power, the enemy of the gods, the one who had set the land ablaze—had fallen. The Demon King was no more. And with his fall, the war was won.

A roar rose from the Mortal Realm, rolling over cities and fields like surf upon a shore. On that day, people did not measure losses. The toll had been staggering, with bodies beyond counting, and among them lay men and women once called Transcendents and Heroes. The rebuilding alone would demand decades. However, none of that mattered in the first breath of victory. For a while, they set grief down and let relief fill their chests.

They laughed through tears, their voices rising in a tide of disbelief and relief. They embraced one another beneath the quieting sky, and in that moment of release, they spoke the name of the one who had carried the world through the fire.

They cried Ketal’s name. People came to him and offered thanks in voices unsteady with awe.

“Thank you,” said a grizzled veteran, bowing until his forehead nearly touched the dirt.

“Ketal, my lord, it is because of you,” said a noblewoman with ash on her hem.

“You would not know me,” said a young soldier, saluting, “but I stood on the line you rescued. You are my savior.”

Ketal accepted their gratitude with an easy smile. He acknowledged each person as if he had all the time in the world and as if every thanks mattered. Among those faces, he found one he knew well.

“Ketal.”

He turned and grinned. “Oh. Kain! So you lived.”

“Barely,” Kain said, and the dry humor could not hide his relief.

It had been a war that ground even Heroes to powder. For those short of that height, a life had been no heavier than a fly’s. That Kain had survived owed something to skill, something to stubbornness, and something to fortune’s thin thread.

Kain stared at him, wonder softening his features. “So you truly won. Against the Demon King himself.”

Against the one who had slaughtered gods and burned half the world, Ketal had prevailed.

“It is beyond extraordinary,” Kain said quietly.

“It was not my strength alone,” Ketal answered. “The gods lent their power. Without them, this would not have been possible.”

He shook his head as if to make the point light, but of course, Kain did not believe him. The gods had not descended with their own hands. They had poured strength into Ketal and let him carry it. That decision alone told the truth of the matter. If it had not been Ketal, there would have been no victory at all.

It was a feat worthy of a god—or perhaps, as some whispered, one that surpassed even the gods themselves. In the streets, the number of those who had begun to revere Ketal grew more visible with each passing day, their awe turning slowly into devotion. Kain regarded him in silence for a moment longer, then spoke with the composed grace of a mortal addressing another, not as worshipper to deity, but as man to man.

“As one who walks this earth, I offer my thanks. If not for you, we would not be breathing such quiet now.”

The damage was not small. Yet set beside the war’s scope, it seemed almost a mercy. That mercy had a name.

Ketal smiled. “Think nothing of it. I owe you, too, and I have for a long time.”

It was not politeness. Kain had been the first Transcendent Swordmaster Ketal ever met. He had forced Ketal to reach higher, taught him the nature of Myst, and showed him how to handle it. To call him a master would not have been wrong.

“Let us continue to be good friends, Kain,” Ketal said. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

“I am honored. Although I have one request.”

“A request?”

“Please do not call me ‘master.’ I ask with all my heart.”

There was more desperate sincerity in that plea than in his formal thanks. Ketal chuckled. “I will consider it.”

Kain turned and took his leave, his footsteps fading into the quiet. In his wake came Arkemis, her presence calm yet heavy with the weight of what had just been witnessed.

“Ketal!” she said.

“Arkemis! You made it through.”

“By a hair.”

Had Serena not pulled her clear, the Demon King’s black light would have put a hole through her. The memory made her arms break out in a quiet shiver.

“It is over,” she said, almost as if the words were strange on her tongue. “At last I can step beyond Elfo Sagrado and go back to Milayna.”

“That is so.”

By any sane measure, Arkemis had been among the worst-struck by the invasion. She had been living in the Denian Kingdom when the named demons targeted her, and that threat had forced her back to the holy land and held her there. Now she had her freedom again.

Ketal asked her, “What are you going to do now?”

“I have barely thought of it. There was no room for private aims in a war that engulfed the world. But that is finished now,” she admitted. She clenched a fist, not in rage but in resolve. “It is time to move for my purpose again.”

“I will be waiting to see it,” Ketal said with a bright smile.

Arkemis went her way. After her came the Holy Sword, Serena.

“You truly won,” Serena said, her expression open with wonder.

“So it turned out. What will you do now?”

“I do not know.”

She stood with a blank, distant look. She was the Holy Sword, a life dedicated to opposing evil. Now that evil had stepped off the board. The reason she had been born had gone out with it.

“What should I do?” she murmured, not to fish for reassurances but because the world had changed beneath her feet.

“Travel the world at your own pace,” Ketal said. “Somewhere on the road, a new purpose will rise to meet you.”

“Traveling does not sound bad,” Serena said, and after a heartbeat, she lifted her eyes to his. “If you permit it, may I follow you a while longer?”

“Do as you like.”

Ketal’s answer carried no condition or weight. Serena nodded once, satisfied with that simple leave.

The next visitor descended with a laugh like a bonfire.

“Uwahahaha! Ketal!”

“You look pleased,” Ketal said.

“How could I not?”

Ignisia, the Elder Dragon, wore the flush and shine of someone happily drunk without a cup in sight.

“You killed the Demon King,” she crowed. “You, the one I pushed into Myst and gifted with the Dragon Tongue! Let those crusted elders try to scold me now.”

Perhaps the Dragon Council had bound her with more scolding than even a dragon could tolerate, because she lifted a skin and drank as if to drown old frustrations. Ketal laughed and kept her company.

After that, many others came. Old allies who had once fought beside him, strangers who had only known him as a distant figure against the sky, envoys and kings, disciples and farmers whose hands still bore the scent of soil—all approached with quiet reverence to offer their thanks. Their gratitude washed over him like a tide, leaving Ketal with a feeling he couldn’t quite name, a strange, unfamiliar weight that lingered in his chest.

He felt as if the world of fantasy itself, with all its pieces, had turned to face him and nod. They looked upon him and spoke to him as a presence, not an accident.

Something he had longed for all his life, acceptance, recognition, and the chance to stand openly in this world, began to fill him piece by piece, and the feeling pleased him more than he had ever expected.

“You look delighted.”

“I am,” Ketal said. “Tower Master.”

The lich made of bone had come, the Master of the Mage Tower whose skull-face never needed to change to convey dry amusement.

“How fares the body?” the Tower Master asked him.

“There are wounds, but nothing troublesome. A few days and they will fade.”

“Wounds from a battle with the Demon King, and you say a few days. It beggars belief.”

“And you,” Ketal asked him, “how do you fare?”

The Tower Master had caught a direct wash of the Demon King’s power. Ketal had warded him, so only a fragment had landed, but that fragment had been ugly enough.

“There is a crack in my life vessel,” the Tower Master answered. “It will take months to repair. It is not mortal. I will recover.”

The war had ended; time to mend existed again. The Tower Master looked around, as if seeing the world for the first time in centuries.

“Even so, the war is truly over. I still struggle to believe it.”

“What happens now?”

“For a time, the gods cannot intervene.”

The Hall of the Gods had poured down their authority to Ketal. In doing so, they had burned a great measure of their strength. For now, they had no spare power to act on the world directly.

“Those who live on the Mortal Realm must repair what was broken with their own hands,” the Tower Master said. “It will not be simple, but it will not be impossible. Slowly, the world will find its old shape. In time, the gods will return to our horizon.”

When that day came, they would manifest their strength and speed the world along its healing. They would separate the Hell that had sunk into the earth and finish sweeping the demons that remained.

“When that is done, all of it will truly end.”

The war would end in a final sense, not just in the fighting but in what the fighting had bent out of true.

“The world will not become a pure quiet,” the Tower Master added. “Humans are what they are. If they do not have an enemy, they build one. They will wage their wars.”

Those would be the world’s own conflicts, born not from an invasion of outer darkness but from within itself. That was no calamity to fear—that was simply life.

“All of this exists because of you, Ketal,” the Tower Master said. “As the Master of the Mage Tower and as an old mage who has watched the Mortal Realm for centuries, I offer respect.”

“Thank you,” Ketal said.

The festival did not stop. Night fell and rose, then fell again, and still people stayed in the streets. Joy kept them bright-eyed. They lost track of weariness and convinced themselves that peace would stretch on and on without end.

Then a sound like grinding teeth tore through the air, harsh and grating, and the world itself began to crack.

***

“Hm,” Ketal muttered.

He chewed a piece of meat with an expression that did not match a victor’s feast. He looked almost dissatisfied, as if a tiny thorn had slipped under a nail where fingers could not reach. Across from him, Serena tilted her head, studying his face.

“You have seemed uneasy for days,” she said. “It looks as if something bothers you. Is there anything on your mind?”

“Nothing in particular,” Ketal answered.

The Demon King had fallen. The demons had retreated and curled inside the broken layers of Hell rather than set foot on the Mortal Realm. Nothing visible existed that could disturb his calm.

“Yet something catches,” he admitted. “My mood feels wrong.”

He could not name it with clean certainty, but a small and loathsome presence seemed to creep along the edge of his senses, inch by inch, as if roaches skittered behind the walls just out of sight. His skin prickled as if he were fighting what he could not see.

Ketal speared another bite with his fork and ate, his brow arched in a faint frown. Serena watched that look and spoke carefully, weighing her words.

“Perhaps you need rest. You have not truly stopped since the fight with the Demon King. A proper break would do you good.”

“No. That is not the shape of the problem.” He answered lightly and set his dishes aside.

A month had passed since the war ended. In that time, Ketal and Serena had wandered the continent together. Though the fighting had ceased, the damage had not dissolved. Villages lay in splinters, bridges had dropped into rivers, and entire districts had collapsed. The gods could not descend to mend such things, which meant those living on the land would have to set them right.

Ketal helped with the repairs. He did it because he liked seeing the land and the people on it, and because it pleased him to put his hands to useful work. The selfish reason did not cancel the good.

When he finished eating, he stood and stretched his shoulders once. “All right.”

He walked out to the worksite where masons and carpenters were measuring foundations and chalking lines. Men gathered around a column that had fallen and stopped there. Shouts bounced from one end of the square to the other. The base alone outweighed a dozen laborers.

Ketal bent, set his grip, and lifted. Stone groaned. The ground trembled under his feet. He carried the pillar as if he were shifting a log for a campfire. Mouths fell open as a murmur swelled into a cheer.

“That is the man who felled the Demon King.”

“Look at him.”

Under his help, the holy land took its old shape back with surprising speed. At that rate, they would finish within days.

In the middle of that busy week, a visitor in sun-colored robes arrived, walking with steady steps that turned every head. The Saintess of the Sun God came to find Ketal.

“Helia,” he said, recognizing her at once.

“It is good to see you,” she answered. “This is our first proper meeting since the last time I offered thanks.”

Like the others, Helia had come to him in the first days after the Demon King’s fall to say what could not be left unsaid. A month had flowed by since then. Ketal paused in his work and faced her with mild curiosity.

“What brings you here?”

The holy land he was helping to raise stood a long way from the Sun God’s holy land. Helia folded her hands at her waist.

“I came to meet you.”

“You need my help?”

“No. I received a revelation.”

“Oh,” Ketal said, and his eyes lit. A revelation!

Helia lowered her voice as if the air itself should show respect. “The great Sun God bids you to the heavens.”

While the world settled into peace, each soul was walking toward its own small destiny. At the same time, far from the eyes of the living, something else reached a peak.

Graaaah!

In the White Snowfield, beyond the paths of mortals, three Primarchs had been locked in a struggle that began when the first light touched the first ice. They had fought since the birth of the cosmos, a battle so long it could only be called near to forever.

Now, at last, that battle had revealed a victor.