One Last Hurrah! The Grayed Heroes Explore a Vivid Future Volume 1 (eBook)
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-0810-7 (ISBN)
Even great heroes eventually grow old. Decades after saving the world, a band of brave heroes now live quietly in peaceful retirement as their final days await just beyond the horizon. Knowing time is short, Ferd the Hero longs to reunite with his old friends and meet his great-grandchild while he still can. In the company of his wife, Elrica the Saint, Ferd sets off on a transcontinental journey to see their comrades and finally visit their family abroad. Yet their last hurrah is bound to be anything but ordinary. After all, wherever legends of great tread, great trouble is sure to follow. Only one question remains: Is there any problem the greatest heroes of their age can't solve?
Ferd, in particular, had grown short in his old age, so he looked rather odd carrying his sword and shield—like a child struggling with a grown man’s armaments.
“Shall we go now?” Ferd said.
“Please watch your step,” Elrica replied.
“I’m not that frail and withered. You should be careful.”
“I don’t believe I’m that withered either.”
The two of them descended the mountain while cheerfully chatting away like any married couple would. They were headed toward their final journey. But even though they claimed that they were still hearty, no one who spared them a glance would ever believe that they were in good health.
“What? Are those kids?” Herman, a golem carriage driver with a load of passengers bound for the next town over, didn’t think they looked well either. From where he sat, he saw the backs of two small humans who he presumed to be children, so he hurriedly picked up his carriage’s speed a little to catch up with them.
“Hmm? Two old people?” But when Herman got close enough to turn his head and look at their faces, he realized that they weren’t children but two elders. “Granny, gramps, did something happen?” I haven’t heard of any poor harvests lately. I don’t think they were abandoned to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Herman called out to the pair once he caught up, but his mind was filled with questions.
They were currently in the large kingdom of Rin. The highways were so well maintained that there were barely any bandits or monsters. But even so, it was strange to see two elderly people casually walking along the road. Understandably, this led Herman to immediately assume that the pair had been kicked out of their village so there’d be fewer mouths to feed.
“Hello there. We thought of going to visit our acquaintances and friends one final time. My wife and I have just started our journey,” Ferd said.
“I see...” Herman was convinced by Ferd’s explanation since the old man clearly didn’t have long left to live, but the driver would have a bit of a hard time sleeping if he abandoned them here and went his merry way. “You’ll die if it rains. Do you have any money? If not, there’s your sword, or the granny’s staff...though it seems to be the ordinary kind, not magical. You can pay with your sword then, so hop aboard.” Herman thought that since the people in his covered carriage had paid the appropriate fee, they would be dissatisfied if he let the elderly couple ride for free. So if they didn’t have any money, he’d take even the cheap sword in that clearly shabby scabbard as payment. Elrica’s staff was pure white and somewhat refined, but it only looked like a regular staff to Herman, so he didn’t think it had much value.
“My sword carries many memories. Besides, we do have money. See?” Ferd glanced at his scabbard before taking out several silver and copper coins from the pouch in his breast pocket.
“Oh, that’s enough for two passengers. Get on.” Herman confirmed that the money was sufficient to cover the fare and pointed toward the carriage with his thumb.
“What should we do, dearest?” Ferd asked Elrica.
“Let’s take the chance and get on,” she replied.
“Agreed. Let’s do that, then. Thank you for the ride.”
And so, Ferd and Elrica became Herman’s customers.
“Dearest, this must be state-of-the-art magical technology!” Ferd said.
“Yes, it must be, honey,” Elrica replied.
The two of them got excited when they saw the metal horses, making it obvious at a glance that they were country bumpkins.
“Huh? Granny, gramps, you two don’t know what a golem carriage is?” a kid asked, head tilted in confusion.
“Addie!” the kid’s mother scolded.
“Oh please, don’t worry about it. My wife and I came from far out in the sticks, you see. This is our first time seeing anything like this,” Ferd spoke truthfully while waving his hand.
Horse golems had been in use for roughly the last forty years. They were made from copper and magic and possessed neither intelligence nor the ability to run. However, while they were unsuited for the battlefield, where greater mobility was necessary, the tireless golems were perfect for transporting people and goods along the more placid highways, and had since become a necessity for people traveling the main roads. The fact that Ferd and Elrica didn’t know that could only mean that they’d suddenly come from a very, very remote place. The two of them had actually been left completely behind by the flow of society, and could even be called foreigners in a sense.
A carriage for travelers on the highway, huh? We live in good times. Ferd smiled as he compared the chaotic past to the peaceful present.
Back during the all-consuming demonic war, if someone heard of a carriage speeding down the highway, they’d assume those folks were trying to make a desperate escape—even with all the monsters set to attack the carriage along the way. With that in mind, even though the horse golems were unfamiliar to them, it was a truly peaceful ride inside the large carriage, not a single fearful face in sight. Of course, that was because the Rin Kingdom was a large country and took care in maintaining its highways; carriages on the frontier had to be more heavily armed and wary.
“In any case, do you think Sazaki will still be there?” Elrica, her thoughts back in the past just like Ferd, wondered if they would find the person they were looking for at their destination.
“I’m sure he is. It would take something truly major for him to leave that place.” Ferd, who was close friends with Sazaki, was convinced they would find him there.
The two of them were headed to Lianard, in the hopes of meeting someone there. The region was known not only for its production of alcohol, but as a place where many different kinds of alcohol were stocked. The one who they hoped to find was a truly hopeless man named Sazaki. If given the choice between only drinking water or alcohol for the rest of his life, he would have chosen the latter in a heartbeat.
As a sidenote, even though Herman had been completely unaware of it, he had set his eyes on something truly monumental.
That humble sword had vanquished a multitude of monsters: an ancient dragon, a true giant, an abyss dweller, a mechanical god, and finally, darkness itself. And alongside this was the staff that had aided that sword. It was impossible to put a price on these items, and if they were ever put up for sale, the world’s most powerful nations and greatest temples would be willing to go to war to obtain them. If they were to be given names, they would be the Sword of Ferd the Hero, and the Staff of Elrica the Saint.
Thanks to Herman’s kindness, the pair had gotten a lift to just outside the walls of Lianard. However, it seemed that there was a line waiting to get in—as if it were taking quite a while for the guards to work through the queue.
Ferd popped his head out of the line to see what was ahead. “It seems we’ll be awhile at the gate.”
“Our turn will come eventually,” Elrica replied.
“Mm-hmm.” Ferd agreed with a nod.
A couple in their nineties wouldn’t get irritated by that level of inconvenience at this point, so they just stood still like rocks or trees. If they weren’t standing, people might think they were dead.
Some time later, it was finally Ferd and Elrica’s turn, but the gatekeeper was puzzled to see two solitary old people come forward when he called.
“Next. Hmm? Granny, gramps, where are your companions, and how many of them are there?”
“It’s just my wife and I.”
“We thought we’d come see an old friend’s face before our time was up. We rode here in a carriage,” Ferd explained.
“I understand.”
Ferd’s words worked like magic. Most people would understand if an old man told them he was coming to meet a friend because his end was drawing near.
“You may pass.”
“Thank you very much.”
Ferd and Elrica looked like just an elderly couple to the gatekeeper, so he doubted there would be any problems and simply let them pass.
“Things sure have changed here, honey. Or rather, I suppose they’ve actually gone back to normal,” Elrica said.
“They sure have, dearest,” Ferd replied.
As Ferd and Elrica stepped foot in Lianard, they were dumbfounded by the state of the town. It had once been famous for its distilleries, but once the war hit, the town morphed into a military production facility, churning out medicine and alchemical supplies. Back then, Lianard was filled with shady looking fellows and restless craftsmen with grim looks on their faces.
“Is it true that moonless liquor has arrived?”
“Gimme the whole barrel!”
“Bring the booze out now!”
The town was now just like it had been before the war. The place was lively, with the shouts of merchants and craftsmen that dealt in alcohol echoing all around, and business was thriving. Ferd and Elrica were only familiar with Lianard’s brutal atmosphere during the war, as well as how the town had been when it was just starting to go back to alcohol production right after the war. Thus, they were truly surprised at the vast difference between now and...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 21.11.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | One Last Hurrah! The Grayed Heroes Explore a Vivid Future |
| Illustrationen | JohnDee |
| Übersetzer | Vasileios Mousikidis |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy |
| Schlagworte | action • Adventure • demon king • Hero • Light Novel • Medieval fantasy • older protagonist |
| ISBN-10 | 1-7183-0810-8 / 1718308108 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-7183-0810-7 / 9781718308107 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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