The Diary of a Middle-Aged Sage's Carefree Life in Another World: Volume 8 (eBook)

Kotobuki Yasukiyo (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-7398-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Whisked right from one pain-in-the-ass job to the next, Zelos's life's been anything but quiet lately. Discovering an ancient city, fighting a demon, and getting ambushed by a group of heroes has only been the start of it.

As he travels to Asuura, the capital of the Artom Empire, he comes across some famous figures from reufayl society-though honestly, he'd rather be done with this whole trip and go home to Santor already. Still, he may just be about to stumble across a secret that reminds him of Santor in a way he'd never expect...

Elsewhere, the aftermath of recent events is shaking up the world: Between the discovery of an ancient city, the destruction of Metis's Grand Temple, and a burgeoning alliance between minor powers, the global status quo seems to be on the verge of collapse. And some, of course, are happier about that than others...

Textauszug

Chapter 1: The Old Guy Arrives in Asuura, Capital of Artom

Dark clouds filled the sky.

As lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and heavy rain poured down, it surveyed the ground from up in the air.

It was an enormous lump of writhing flesh, shaped like a hideous, humanoid head made from entrails. This was the sinister life-form that would later be known as the Dark God.

Directly beneath, an army of steel numbering in the tens of thousands stood against the entity. The army began firing intense flashes of light at its fleshy foe.

Their forces included six-legged steel walking tanks and fighter aircraft that ripped through the sky. These forces were the pinnacle of magical engineering—yet they were utterly inconsequential in the face of the Dark God.

An impenetrable, invisible wall stopped every one of their missiles and cannonballs.

The lump of flesh gathered mana in a hole that looked like some massive mouth, then fired a beam of scorching light. Immediately, the ground troops in its path went up in flames, and that was the end of them.

It was completely one-sided. It was no longer even a fight—just a slaughter.

The floating lump of flesh mercilessly wiped out the troops on the ground, like an elephant stepping on ants. This was humanity’s worst nightmare.

Flames swept over the earth, forming a firestorm that engulfed the soldiers on the ground. The fighter jets, out of ammunition, resorted to ramming the abomination in suicide attacks, exploding on impact. But despite their desperate efforts, the Dark God continued to float completely unharmed, as if it were mocking the soldiers who dared to defy its onslaught.

Hopeless grieving, resolute sacrifice; both were equally meaningless here. The soldiers were throwing their lives away in vain.

As if avenging the fallen soldiers, an orbital strike satellite fired powerful arrows of light at the Dark God one after another. Each tore through the battlefield on impact, their explosions and shock waves on par with those created by nuclear warheads.

But even the most powerful weapons could not damage the Dark God.

That grotesque head emerged from the explosions unscathed, driving the remaining soldiers to despair.

Light converged in the Dark God’s “mouth,” and another beam shot straight through the battlefield, rending the earth. An entire city, home to tens of thousands, was erased in an instant. The heat melted rock and dirt into lava, which flowed across the area like a tidal wave.

And the Dark God’s mighty attack hadn’t just destroyed an entire city. It had continued beyond, boring through the mountain range that lay behind.

Again, the monster struck. This attack split as it traveled, each prong surging toward military sites around the world. Before long, each target went up in a huge explosion and vanished. Each annihilation was recorded by military satellites and relayed to the central system of various cities. From these records, they knew each military site attacked had held a hero summoning sigil—sigils that, had they survived, would have drained enough mana from the land to desertify the continent.

Just like that, the battle at the third defensive front was over in a mere three hours, resulting in the loss of the allied force of many different races.

This was part of the ancient advanced civilization’s final stand against the Dark God, an event that would later be called the Dark God War.

The records included no evidence of summoned heroes from another world sealing away the Dark God. In contrast, there was clear confirmation that abnormally evolved creatures began appearing around the world following the war, restricting the space in which humanity could survive.

Civilization declined rapidly, and eventually, humanity was forced to scrape by in limited areas—bringing us to the present day.

* * *

“Th-There’s no way anyone could beat that thing, right?!” the heroes cried out as they watched the projected footage.

“Ah—yeah, you think so too?” Zelos replied, holding the crystal ball that projected the footage. “I have to say I’m with you there. It’s a little out of hand...”

Since they’d just been sitting inside a carriage with time to kill, Zelos had decided to watch the battle footage he’d found in Isa Lante with the heroes. After the system had mysteriously designated him a city administrator, he’d been able to take the footage—which depicted an ancient battle with the Dark God—out of the city with him.

Although they sat around the carriage as if it were a movie night, their little viewing made it clear that the Dark God was far beyond anything humans could handle. These heroes, of course, had originally been summoned to defeat the Dark God, or so they’d been told. But the footage made it abundantly clear they didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.

“This ain’t just a matter of ‘levels,’ is it...”

“No kidding... If Metis tried forcing us to fight this thing, we’d have a much easier time trying to revolt instead.”

“I... I just want to run away. I’m so glad we got captured, Jun...”

“Couldn’t have said it any better, Yukari. There’s no way we can beat that. It’s just insane...”

Now that they’d seen footage of the Dark God in action, the heroes were intimately aware of how absurdly powerful an enemy they’d been close to having to fight. Even with all the fantasy staples of sacred swords and ultimate spells, they couldn’t imagine coming out on top against this thing.

The Dark God was such a dominating presence that things like level differences and weapon quality seemed utterly meaningless.

“I... I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home...”

“Yukari... We all feel the same way.”

“Tashiro’s right. None of us wanna fight against that crazy thing. Me included.”

“Uh, Kannagi—weren’t you the one going on about how you’re gonna defeat the Dark God?”

“Yeah, that’s...not happening. It’s pretty much a colossal living weapon. No, worse... It’s like the weapon to end all weapons, gone out of control.”

These heroes—Satoru Kannagi, Kota Sakamoto, Yukari Yamazaki, and Jun Tashiro—just wanted to escape from being heroes at all, at this point. Honestly, watching footage like this would probably have made anyone want to flee.

The priests had said the heroes could defeat the Dark God easily with swords and magic, but it was clear that wasn’t the case. Given the Dark God had wiped out an advanced civilization’s strongest weapons in a single attack, it was obviously beyond mortal comprehension.

“Did the Faith mention anything about sacred swords or relics or the like?” Zelos asked. “The legends of the ancient heroes say the Dark God’s power was sealed away using seven sacred weapons, right?”

“What? We’ve... We’ve never heard that before. They showed us a sacred sword, but it was all beat-up; it didn’t look like it was hiding some kind of incredible power inside.”

The Dark God hadn’t fallen even when hit by a particle-beam weapon that far surpassed wide-area annihilation magic. In fact, it didn’t seem to have been harmed at all.

If swords, magic, and prayers were strong enough to take down the Dark God, the Faith of the Four Gods should’ve conquered the world long ago.

“I wonder if that means the heroes’ weapons aren’t meant to defeat the Dark God, but just seal it away?” one of the heroes asked.

“I can’t say for sure,” Zelos replied, “but you’re probably right. At the very least, even someone at the Divine Crafter level—someone at the peak of their trade—wouldn’t be able to make a weapon that could take out an enemy like that.”

“Divine Crafter” was a blanket term referring to crafters who had raised a crafting job skill to the Divine rank—which included Zelos, of course. But even with such impressive craftsmanship, Zelos couldn’t imagine making a weapon that could take down the Dark God. Sure, he and his party had defeated the Dark God in Swords & Sorceries, but he figured they’d probably only been able to do that because the Dark God had been operating under different laws of nature there, preventing it from unleashing its full power.

Otherwise, there was no way a party of five would’ve been able to defeat it, Great Sages or not.

“The Dark God’s not just gonna suddenly pop up somewhere, is it? Apparently, it’s already revived...”

“Who knows? We can’t say for sure. I did hear the base of some mountain got blown up recently...”

Zelos kept silent.

The heroes were talking about the little incident caused by Zelos’s Gluttonous Void gravity magic. But he couldn’t exactly say, “Oh, yeah, whoopsie daisy, that was me!”

And at the same time, the Dark God was in the process of growing anew in a culture tank in his house. It made the topic rather awkward for him.

“The Dark God, huh...?” murmured Lusei, who’d boarded the carriage too to help keep an eye on the heroes. “If something like that does appear, we won’t be able to stop it, I can say that much.”

The mere thought of the Dark...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.12.2025
• Reihe/Serie: The Diary of a Middle-Aged Sage's Carefree Life in Another World
• Illustrationen: JohnDee
• Übersetzer: James McBride
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: gamer hero • harem gamelit • Isekai • Light Novel • LitRPG • older protagonist • overpowered main character
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-7398-8 / 1718373988
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-7398-3 / 9781718373983