Standing in front of Saussy Village was a young man in his early twenties with shaggy brown hair. He looked out towards the distance with a look of worry, tapping his foot impatiently.
"I wonder what could be taking them so long," he wondered aloud. "Surely those boars aren't as powerful as that magical beast they fought."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Snapping him out of his worried stupor, the young man heard screaming coming from farther away. As it got closer, the brunette saw that the source of the yelling was Asta, as he and Yuno were racing against one another to see who could make it to the village first.
Over Asta's shoulder, he carried the dead bodies of four incredibly huge boars while using his spectral arm to carry six more corpses. Meanwhile, Yuno was using his Wind Magic to hold up ten additional boar corpses in the air.
Once they made it to the village, Asta and Yuno stopped in front of the young man, as he looked at the pair of brothers in confusion.
"So… who got here first?," Asta wheezed, panting heavily as he looked towards the young man expectantly.
"Uh, I think you two tied," the young man answered, while Asta and Yuno looked disappointed by the results of their race.
"Ah, come on! I was so sure I was going to beat you this time!," Asta whined to Yuno who didn't look all that impressed with him.
"Not in a million years," Yuno replied stoically, lowering the boars he was carrying to the ground with his magic.
Asta looked annoyed by Yuno's taunt, muttering a simple "Whatever" before lowering the boars he had in his spectral hand to the ground and shrugging the remaining boars off his shoulders.
"Anyway, sorry we took so long," the ashen-blonde musclehead apologized to the young man. "Those boars were a lot bigger and stronger than we'd thought they'd be."
"We told you that you didn't have to hunt them for us anymore," the young brunette replied, referring to himself and his fellow villagers. "We would have gladly given you two your payment after defending our village from that beast."
"No way!," Asta quickly denied, shooting down the idea. "It would've been wrong to take that money without even doing what we were hired to do!"
Yuno nodded his head in agreement, causing the young man to smile at the two teenagers appreciatively.
"You've got good hearts, boys. You've more than earned this."
The young brunette then took two small bags of yul from his pocket and handed one bag to Asta and Yuno. Asta holds his bag in his hand and looks at it with stars in his eyes while Yuno looks at his bag with a smile of satisfaction on his face.
"I wish we could give you guys more, but we could only afford to give you what Seihi had promised," the young man explained apologetically.
"Are you kidding!? This is perfect!," Asta assured, looking through his bag happily. "I've got about 1,000 yul in here! That's enough for a whole bag of tatoes!"
"I'm going to buy some meat with my share," Yuno revealed, not too keen on the idea of using all of their money to buy tatoes.
"Great idea, Yuno!," Asta told his brother excitedly. "We can have a steak and tato dinner to celebrate finishing our first job! Doesn't that sound awesome!?"
As Yuno smiled and nodded in response, the young brunette from Saussy Village couldn't help but smile warmly at the sight of the brothers.
"Oh I almost forgot to ask," Asta began, snapping out of his excitement at the prospect of eating meat and tatoes. "Were you able to break through the ice yet?"
After being led to the center of town by the young man with the shaggy brown hair, Asta and Yuno were faced with the men who had attacked the village, frozen in a pillar of ice.
"We got everyone with fire magic together to try and melt the ice, but no matter how many times we've tried, we weren't able to melt it."
"Let me give it a try then!," Asta suggested with a stern expression on his face.
"Well, if anyone can do it, it'd be one of you," the young man relented before shrugging his shoulders. "I say go for it. Not like there's anything to lose from you trying."
He then pulled a blue book with a golden three leaf clover insignia on the cover out of a pouch he had hanging on the waist of his pants.
"Luckily, my grimoire has a binding spell, so I'll be able to restrain them once they're free."
Asta nodded his head at the young brunette before his grimoire floated from his pouch to right in front of his torso and opened itself up. As soon as his greatsword manifested from the pages, he quickly took it and readied himself to swing it. Behind him, Yuno had his grimoire open as well, readying an attack spell in case something went wrong.
'This is it. Our chance to find out who released that demon on our village,' Asta thought to himself as he tightened the grip on his greatsword.
"HRRRRAGH!"
Swinging with all his might, Asta managed to break through the ice in one attack, freeing the villages' attackers from being frozen.
"Water Magic: Water Binding Whips"
Using the power of his grimoire, the young brunette was able to restrain the criminals with whips made out of water. The attackers attempted to try and break free from their restraints, but they were unable to do so. Seeing that they weren't able to escape, Asta walked up to Heath and pointed the tip of his greatsword towards his face.
"Listen up… I want you to tell me everything you know about this master of yours!," the ashen-blonde swordsman growled. "Was he the one who released that demon onto our village!?"
"I'm under no obligation to tell you anything about my master," Heath replied calmly, unconcerned with the sword being pointed at his face. "Threatening my life isn't going to change that."
"Urrrrrrrrgh! Why you…!" Asta trailed off, suppressing his anger and hatred towards the man in front of him.
'How peculiar… I can't seem to sense Cerberus' presence,' Heath noted curiously. 'I doubt a noble demon such as him would leave common trash like these three alive.'
"You," he began, referring to Yuno. "Tell me… where is Lord Cerberus?"
A small smile appeared on Yuno's face before quickly turning into a cocky and confident grin.
"That demon never stood a chance against Asta and I."
"What an obvious lie," Heath brushed off Yuno's answer. "The only ones that are capable of defeating a beating as powerful as Lord Cerberus are those with royal blood, the Magic Knight captains, or the Wizard King himself. As if two no name kids could ever injure Lord Cerberus, let alone best him in battle."
Smiling cockily, Asta pulled his triple nunchaku out from his grimoire with his free hand and showed it to Heath.
"You sure about that?"
The nunchaku had somehow changed from an icy-blue color to pure black color since entering Asta's grimoire. Sensing Cerberus' presence in the nunchaku, Heath's eyes widened in shock and awe.
'Impossible! They actually managed to defeat Lord Cerberus!? How is this possible!?'
"Now tell us what we want to know already!," Asta demanded, having returned the nunchaku to his grimoire and pointing the tip of his greatsword at Heath again.
"You could either tell them now, or we'll have the Magic Knights get the information out of you," the young brunette villager stepped in. "Either way, the information is going to get out."
"It will not," Heath declared confidently, causing Asta, Yuno, and the villager to scowl at him. "The end times are upon us."
Before anyone could question what he had meant, Heath's body began to glow purple.
"He's using a magic item! He must have it hidden somewhere on his body!," the young brunette realized before turning to Asta. "Quick! Stop him before he's able to fully activate it!"
However, it was already too late…
"Ice Magic: Ice Burial"
As soon as the spell had activated, Heath and his men had turned to ice before breaking apart and fading away.
"He… he just sacrificed their lives without a second thought," the young brunette uttered in shock.
Yuno clenched his fists in anger, not uttering a single word after what had just happened.
'That was our chance to find out who attacked our village! And it slipped from our grasp!,' the wind mage thought in frustration.
"How could he just treat life like it's nothing!?," Asta snarled, trying his best to suppress his anger. "I'll never understand that! Never!"
Hours had passed since the death of Heath and his men. It was evening, and Asta and Yuno were standing in front of the village's entrance, alongside the young brunette villager that had restrained his village's attackers.
"Once again, I'd like to thank you two for saving our village and avenging my father's death," the young man told the two teenagers, bowing in respect.
"There's really no need to do that," Asta awkwardly assured him, uncomfortable with being bowed to.
"Nonsense! As the new chief of Saussy Village, this is the very least I can do!," the young man brushed off Asta's humbleness. "I just wish I could do more to reward you both."
"You told us that you would have the Magic Knights investigate those attackers for us. That's more than enough," Yuno assured the young village chief with a small smile.
"Yeah! You have no idea how much that means you us!," Asta agreed with a huge smile. "Seriously, thanks a lot!"
Assured by the brothers' attempts at easing him , the new village chief decided to accept their words and smile back at the two in silence. The quiet was then swiftly interrupted once a black bird with black horns on its head, red feathers covering its face, and white feathers covering its stomach landed on Asta's head. The bird had something purple and shiny in its mouth, which it used to peck Asta's head.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!," Asta yelled in pain, trying and failing to grab the bird as it flew off his head and into the air. "What do you have against my head, feather brain!? You wanna fight!?"
"An anti-bird?," Yuno questioned aloud before noticing the shiny purple thing in its mouth. "What's that in its mouth?"
"Huh?," Asta uttered, stopping his attempted attack on the bird to consider what Yuno had just said. The bird slowly approached Asta before dropping the shiny purple thing from its mouth and into the swordsman's hands. Taking a closer look, Asta noticed that the purple thing was a stone with the pattern of a crescent moon with three stars. "It's a stone."
Noticing what it was that the bird had given to Asta, the young village chief's eyes widened in surprise.
"I recognize that stone. It's a charm that belonged to my father."
"SERIOUSLY!?," Asta exclaimed. Flabbergasted by what the bird had given him, Asta quickly tried to give Seihi's charm back to the young brunette. "Sorry about that! Here you go!"
The new village chief chuckled before pushing the hand that held the charm back towards Asta.
"Keep it. Consider it a token of gratitude for everything you've done."
"Oh. O-Okay," Asta accepted, surprised that the young man would give such a precious charm that belonged to his father to him.
The anti-bird once again landed on Asta's head, ruffling its feathers before quickly falling asleep.
"Looks like that anti-bird has taken an interest in you, Asta," Yuno commented amusedly, finding humor in the fact that the anti-bird had made Asta's head its new home.
"Come on, seriously!?," Asta loudly complained, not finding the situation as humorous as Yuno had.
The young brunette laughed at Asta's predicament while Yuno quietly chuckled to himself, causing the young ash-blonde business owner to focus his ire on the two of them.
"This isn't funny!," he yelled, failing to stop the laughter or wake the anti-bird up. Lifting his head towards the sky, Asta let out his frustration by yelling at the top of his lungs. "URGGGHHHHHH! MY HEAD IS NOT A BIRD'S NEST!"
In a dark room with cobblestone floor, a cloaked man dressed similarly to Heath's men was crouched down on his knee, looking up at a man wearing a golden cloak with a blue fur trim around the neck of the cloak.
"I see… so Cerberus has been defeated, and Heath chose to sacrifice himself," the man with the golden cloak recounted what he had just been informed. "Not only that, but the magic stone fell into the hands of the two children who managed to defeat Balrog."
"That is correct," the other man confirmed.
Turning away, the golden cloaked man did not seem the least bit tense or nervous about this new development.
"No matter. We can retrieve the magic stone from them at any time. And if they think that they can defeat me simply because they beat two of my demons already…"
Reaching into his pocket, the man with the golden cloak pulled out a brown feather and grasped it tightly.
"…They will quickly realize they are sorely mistaken."
Alright, hey guys, I hope you enjoyed this chapter of "Making The Devils Cry". Sorry this chapter is so short, but that's because it serves as an epilogue to the Saussy Village arc. Next chapter should be longer, as it sets up the beginning of the Dungeon Exploration arc. Make sure to review, give me your honest criticisms, and follow and favorite if you liked the chapter. Also, comment what you think the new demon I teased will end up being. I hope you guys enjoyed, and until next time, later!