"Fuuh, I'm dead tired…" Mino murmured as he sat down. His face was pale and beads of sweat fell down his face from exhaustion.
"Hahaha, our hero shouldn't show weakness now, can he?" Boriat asked with a wide smile.
"Give me a break, man. We've just come out of a brutal fight. Look at what we did?" Mino retorted jokingly as he pointed at the behemoth of a castle above them.
Arthur and the two girls instinctively looked up too. The castle which seemed unpenetrable at first sight was now wrecked by destruction and chaos. A huge hole was torn open into its dark walls as giant rocks fell down to the ground like rain.
'Damn, that fight must've been brutal…' Arthur whistled as he looked down at the group again. The first thing he noticed now was the fact that apart from small scratches and dirt, the group didn't seem to have sustained any heavy injuries. Their armors were completely wrecked beyond repair but, their bodies were certainly far from what Arthur would expect a group that just recently fought the demon king to look like.
His body, on the other hand, had more noticeable scratches all over that stung quite a bit. However, he seemed just as fine as they were.
"Hmm, that's odd… Did she…" Arthur had a hunch about what could've happened that minimized their injuries and his suspicion fell on the mature and beautiful lady chuckling as she talked to the other hero party members. Kali seemed to be the oldest out of the group, ignoring the giant of a man Boriat, she had an air of calmness around her that gave comfort to those who felt it.
"Mm, Kali…"
"Hm?" Kalis heard Arthur calling her so she looked at him with a gentle smile. "Is everything ok, Arthur? Do you still have some injuries that need healing?" She asked.
'Thought so…'
"No, no, I just wanted to thank you for healing all of us in the middle of the fight. You were truly a lifesaver." He smiled as he continued with what he was intending to say as if nothing happened.
The rest of the group noticed their interaction and barged into the conversation.
"Yeah! Kali was amazing there! She made it look so easy!" Ani exclaimed as she jumped excitedly.
"Of course, we have the best healer in the world so it's natural that she would do this well." The Hero Meno added with a grin.
"Hahahahaha! I guess we're all going to praise Kali then!"
Hearing their words, the woman blushed slightly as she chuckled. Her graceful movements further simplified her matureness.
"Please stop, I didn't do much."
The group laughed at her reaction as they continued to chat idly. Arthur even found himself instinctively included in that conversation. For some reason, even though he never met these people before, he still felt connected to them by a weird connection that he couldn't quite decipher.
Perhaps it was this body's emotions reacting to the hero party or maybe it was simply the strength of the bond these people shared with each other that made him feel safe around them.
"So, what are we supposed to do now? We aren't quite done yet are we?" Arthur asked, finally focusing on the most important task at hand which was to return home.
Everyone's joking immediately stopped and they returned to their serious faces.
"Well, as Arthur just asked, things aren't done yet. Even though we killed the demon king, we're still within the demon territory which is still filled to the brim with demons and monsters. It will at least take a few months for all of them to wither away and for this land to get rid of the dark energy that the demon king injected into it. Should we just wait here till that happens?" He explained.
'Now that doesn't sound like the best situation to be in.' Arthur sighed inwardly. He already predicted that the journey home wouldn't be easy since well, what was the point of this whole plotline if it was going to be a smooth sail? Even though he didn't want to face danger, a part of him thought otherwise since more danger meant more thrill and more thrill meant more good for his One-Shot Manga and more chances for it to succeed.
"We can't stay here waiting for months. Our rations are dwindling fast and we barely have enough for 2 weeks." Ani replied as she swung her staff and opened a rift in thin air that surprised Arthur.
Her movement was seamless and yet the effect it created was mind-blowing. Under his curious gaze, Ani then shoved her hand into the portal as if she was inspecting something before she pulled out a piece of bread to show it to the group.
'That's… a spacial storage! Holy shit, it's the unfamous spatial storage! Who thought I would see it now so suddenly? It looks so cool.'
Being a fantasy Manga reader himself, seeing something as popular as the spatial storage trope in front of him, as real as it could get, Arthur could only start fanboying over it.
"I agree with Ani on this one, Mino. We won't be able to survive that long and even if we could, there is no guarantee demons won't find us and attack us." Kali added in support of Ani's argument.
"Hahahaha! If demons attack, I smash their hands with my ax!" Borat laughed loudly as he touched the ax resting on his back. Looking at it from up close, Arthur could see the bloodstains that remained on the ax along with the chips and cracks from the brutal fight.
"There are still thousands of monsters lurking in this land. We can't fight them forever. We're already exhausted as is." Mino nodded his head.
"So, that means that we should start heading back?" Arthur finally barged into the conversation.
"Yes, that's the optimal solution. However, it's not without risk as that means confronting enemies willingly. We could be in for another brutal battle." Ani shared her fears with an open heart.
Even though she looked no older than 15 years of age, she still seemed to have a wise mind and a smart tactical understanding of what they should and shouldn't do.
"We already did the hardest part, boys! A few measly demons won't be able to stop us from going back to our people carrying victory!" Boriat said with a powerful tone.
"Boriat is right. We have nothing to fear. We already faced death a thousand times before, another time won't hurt."
The rest of the hero party nodded their heads in acknowledgment. They knew that cowering now was just dumb since they were so close to freedom after such a long and brutal war.
"But, let's set a camp on the foothill of the mountain and then start moving tomorrow," Mino said.
"Yayy!! I want some soup!" Ani exclaimed.
"Do we even still have meat?" Kali asked.
"Hahaha, enough for a celebration tonight for sure!"
"Tonight is going to be for celebration!"
"Uh, guys…" Seeing how excited they were, Arthur could only sigh before he joined them.
The hero party then set up their camp and finally went down to cook their dinner. Kali was the one responsible for it since she was the best cook out of them all. Meanwhile, the others set the campfire and the tents before sitting down around it.
By that time, the sun had already set down and the moon was now high in the sky, a luminescent disc that shone on the dark territory of the demon kingdom.
The atmosphere was quiet, except for the flickering of the fire that cooked the soup slowly. The hero party simply sat in silence as they stared dazedly at the fire.
Even though they seemed excited and happy, deep down, they needed time to think properly about what happened. After fighting for god knows how many years, it was obviously a scarring experience that even the toughest of people can't just brush away.
But, for certain, that night was going to be a happy night for them. One they needed more than they would ever expect.