How trying to sell a legendary hero's sword led me to battle the Demon Lord

25 - Remembering...

Because it was quite late, the Demon Lord let us sleep the night inside his castle. We each had our individual rooms, and each was quite big... The beds were almost as comfortable as the ones in that inn... However, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get any sleep. I just had this one thought in my mind... Was this what I wanted? Was this what they wanted...? They? They... My family... Them and all the villagers... My friends... They were crying and screaming as they were all killed one by one by demons. I swore to defeat the demon army right then and there... So why did I just let it go for no reason and accept the hero's offer to help the Demon Lord? No matter how I think about it, it doesn't make much sense... Maybe this story is badly written after all, or I'm just plain stupid... Could be both... But let's go with the first option...

I had the opportunity to avenge them, so why didn't I take it? If I had just defeated the Demon Lord, then everything would be fine... But then... The hero said that the Demon Lord is not evil... He said that the king was the real evil in this world... Is this true? Why am I even believing him? It's the Demon Lord! He's the literal incarnation of evil!

I got up from my bed. I didn't really feel sleepy. I knew what I had to do... I couldn't just leave the Demon Lord be. I took the legendary hero's holy sword with me and opened the door. To my surprise, Andrew was standing right outside my room. He was surprised too. He wasn't sleepy either. He hadn't talked much during our encounter with the hero and the Demon Lord, but I just knew from seeing him that he had a lot to say. Maybe that was what was keeping him awake... Or maybe it was for the same reason as me...

I let him enter my room. We sat on the bed and he started talking.

"Are we really going to go defeat the king?"

"I don't know at this point..." I said. "We don't even know if what he's saying is true... But still..."

"But still? What do you say we do?"

"I say we continue on with our original mission..."

"You still want us to defeat the Demon Lord?"

"I think..."

There was silence... It wasn't that long. Maybe 3 seconds, but it felt way longer... Maybe it would've even been better if it had really been longer... If it had never stopped... Andrew started talking, effectively breaking the silence that had been created:

"What if what they said was true? Then what do we do?"

"Then we're wrong... That's it..."

The silence was resumed. It seemed even longer, but it was actually even shorter than the previous one. The longer the silence seemed, the more we were thinking. And the more we were thinking, the longer the silence seemed. what an unnecessary way to say this... But this time, it was me that broke the silence:

"Should we go check on Dug?"

"Yeah... Maybe we should... To hear what his opinion is on the matter..."

So we got up from the bed and made our way to Dug's room. We opened the door and looked inside. Dug was sleeping soundly...

"Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow..." I said while closing the door while making the least noise I could.

We went back to our rooms and tried to sleep again... To no avail...