Falling Into Hell

The moment Solomon’s silhouette dropped to the ground, a blade swung.

Chwaaaak!
At that, one guard collapsed without even managing a scream─.

“Guhk……!”

By then, Solomon was already pulling the trigger of the Nightfall automatic crossbow, having loaded ten shadow bolts by spending one Level 1 spell slot.
The silent bolt shot through the air. Before there was even time to realize it, the bolt had pierced the guard’s neck. At the same time, a Shadow Mark rippled around the guard.

In an instant, Solomon closed the distance right in front of him, triggered the Shadow Mark, and drove in the finishing blow.

Kwachik, chwaaaak!
With that strike, blood burst outward in an explosive spray. Even calling it a blood fountain was not enough to describe it. A shower of blood was quite literally pouring down like rain. The whole area had already become a sea of blood. The blood-soaked cleaner, drenched in the spurting blood, was no exception.

It was the effect of the Reaper subclass perk, <Excessive Bleeding>.

‘Ah, damn it.’

With blood spraying out like this, there was no hope of acting ‘stealthily.’ Even so, nothing changed. Thanks to the Shadow Lurker, the internal layout of Chimera Division 3 was already as familiar to him as his own home.

‘The cleaners are going to have a rough time.’

Leaving blood scattered wherever he went, Solomon moved on. Because <Shadow Lurker> was showing him the movements ahead and the scenes beyond each corner, Solomon’s steps never hesitated.

The air was filled with the sharp smell of ozone and chemicals. Unidentified fiber cables ran in bundles along the walls, and liquid coolant and the like flowed through them, glowing blue.

<CH-03_Δ>, <CH-04_X>, <BASILISK_α>.
Besides the Core Project Room, capsules marked with messages of unknown meaning lined each wing. Every one of them was a capsule containing a frozen chimera.

It was as if the entire division were a single living mass of flesh.
At the end of the glass corridor lined with experimental capsules on both sides, Solomon’s destination finally came into view.

Core Project Room.
The entrance was tightly shut, and there was no sign of anyone around. In other words, paradoxically, the moment he entered this place, there would be ‘no risk of being caught by anyone.’ Fortunately, opening the door to the Core Project Room was not difficult. He didn’t even need to use the Ancient Spider Lockpick.

Solomon’s forged ID card. Officially, the cleaning zone assigned to him was that very place right in front of him.

The moment he touched the forged ID card to it, the door opened. At that exact instant, Edward Crowley, chief director of Chimera Division 3, turned his head at the sudden sight of the Core Project Room door opening.

There was no one there.
But there was someone right behind him.

Someone who adjusted his grip on a hilt, which had been tempered by blood and shadow magic and hungered for flesh, blood, and bone.

Kwachik!
That very strike came crashing down. All the traits, perks, spells, and gear Solomon had built up until now meshed together like gears, in the form of a sneak attack.

The pure-white interior of the project room was dyed crimson in the blink of an eye. The hilt in his hand had already driven through the target’s back, split bone, and pierced the heart. An unquestionably fatal strike.. There wasn’t even a scream. A silent death.

Without offering anything worthy of being called resistance, the target’s body collapsed on the spot. Quite literally in a single blow. Solomon silently looked down at Edward Crowley’s corpse lying at his feet.

After looking down at it, he moved to do what still remained.

The biological culture fluid resting on a glass dish protected by multiple layers of locks. It matched what he had seen in the documents.

<CH-666_Ω>

Just as Solomon was about to use the Ancient Spider Lockpick to unlock it, leaving the unidentified label behind.

Woooong.
In the silence, the frozen capsule that should have remained asleep began to activate.

“!”

Solomon steeled himself. There was no way things would have gone this easily from the start. In a sense, it was not even surprising.

‘They probably locked away some trump-card chimera in there.’

As he thought that and took a guarded stance toward whatever was thawing beyond the capsule.
Seeing what opened its eyes beyond the capsule, Solomon silently swallowed.

‘It’s not a chimera?!’

The metallic sound of the lock releasing rang out. The frost clinging to the capsule vanished, and something flowed out through the gaps. It wasn’t cold air. It was black vapor and the heat of darkness.

Right after that, a silhouette appeared beyond the capsule.
Skin blazing as though it were burning, twisted goat horns above its head, and bat wings attached to its back.
It looked like nothing other than a stereotypical demon.

[Insight Success! Hell Demon]

Which meant that the data they wanted in the first place was…….

‘A demon’s biological culture fluid!’

It was certainly the kind of thing one would want badly enough to hire a hotel contractor to obtain.

“Mortal, was it you who awakened me?”
“Yes.”

Solomon answered.

“I took a commission to get you out of this prison.”

[Deception Roll in Progress……]

He spoke the lie calmly without even blinking. A demon obviously would not have willingly climbed into a mega guild’s frozen capsule of its own accord.

“A mere mortal… saved me?”

At those words, the demon let out a disbelieving scoff. Sulfurous fire was already burning inside the project room, and the blazing flames of hell were beginning to bloom like flowers.

“That’s right.”
“You dare… spout such words just because you have a mouth.”
“Well, I’m merely carrying out a commission.”

Solomon answered evenly.

“It’s a commission from someone you could never even imagine.”
“……!”

[Deception Roll in Progress……]

At those words, the demon’s eyes wavered. Its bewilderment was plain to see.

‘If I can get through this without fighting, there’s no reason to spill blood.’

Solomon’s expression remained composed.

“As an assassin of Hotel Snark, I came for a commission. By contract, I cannot reveal the client’s name. I merely did what had to be done. Is there anything strange about that?”

More than ever.

“No…….”

The crimson-winged demon trailed off quietly. Even as it spoke, sulfurous fire, pitch-black vapor, and an unknowable malicious aura continued to pour out in endless waves. It might not have been an out-of-scale monster like Beelzebub, but it was clearly no ‘ordinary demon.’

“I owe you a debt, assassin of the hotel.”

Saying that, the demon bowed its head with decorum. So much so that there was no better word for it than truly proper.

‘Demons these days must get very good etiquette lessons.’

[Critical Deception Success!]

“At last, I am free… and can return home.”

At the same time, crimson wings wrapped around the demon’s body, and in that state it whispered softly.

“To our land, the Nine Hells.”
“That’s good.”

If things continued like this, Solomon could finish the commission by sending the demon back to hell without a fight. From Solomon’s point of view, it was the best possible outcome.

“Still, though I do not know which unnameable one bestowed such ‘mercy’ upon me…….”

At that moment, the crimson-winged demon continued meaningfully.

“Even so, to send away one who carries on that will like this… would not be the way of a demon.”
“What?”
“As a demon, I shall offer you the gratitude I ought to show.”

Solomon didn’t even have time to tilt his head in confusion.

Fwoosh!
The world beneath his feet began to blaze crimson.

‘?!’

No, saying it had begun to blaze was inaccurate. It had been blazing from the start. Beginning and end alike, without exception.

[Insight Success!]

By the time he realized it, it was no longer the project room of Chimera Division 3 where Solomon had been standing. The difference was not something that could be brushed aside with phrases like there was a bit of blood splatter or something caught fire.

It was not even the inside of the Prometheus Genetics building anymore to begin with.

‘Ah, for fuck’s sake.’

An endless barrage of blazing fire stretching beyond the horizon, along with unknown structures now rising above the ground. They carried such impossible oppression and grandeur that it was hard to believe they had been built by human hands, and even inspired an unknowable awe.
A place that fell short in no way of being called a demonic realm.
It was no longer the Guild City Solomon knew. It was not even an exception like Ghosttown.

He understood it instinctively.

[Insight Success! Fallen into Hell]

That he had fallen into hell. At least for a TRPG player, it would not have been an exaggeration to call it the worst situation imaginable. Especially for Solomon as he was now.

“Ah, fuck.”

A bad habit slipped out unconsciously.

“My introduction is late.”

The crimson-winged demon was there as well, having returned to its homeland, Hell, with Solomon brought along as company on the road. At this point, Solomon didn’t even know whether he could trust it. There would have been nothing strange if it turned into the enemy he had to face immediately.

“I am Barbatos, the Demon of the Hunt.”

At some point, a longbow no ordinary person could ever have properly fired was in his hand, along with a hat adorned with the sharp feathers of a hunter dancing in the air.

“For the one who saved me, I wish to grant a special reward of hell.”
“……A reward of hell?”

Solomon asked with narrowed eyes. The phrase sounded suspicious on its face, yet it also carried too much weight to be dismissed.

“By the laws of the Nine Hells, a demon has an absolute duty to repay a mortal who has aided it.”
“……”

In other words, had he brought Solomon to hell in order to repay his debt as a demon?

“To settle that debt, I shall permit you to hunt in my hunting grounds.”

That was what the Demon of the Hunt said. Solomon blinked for a moment, failing to grasp the meaning at once, but that changed nothing.

“That is my recompense as a demon.”

A recompense. The right to enter a demon’s hunting grounds and hunt.

Whooong!
The moment he understood, the scenery around him twisted once more. At the end of that distortion, Solomon found himself standing before an iron gate too immense to describe merely as grand. Beyond the horizon, endless iron bars stretched out, forming a whole region that existed to imprison something.

Beyond it spread a forest where endless darkness writhed. No, even calling it dark was not enough.
Blood ran down every tree trunk. More precisely, some of it had dried, while some of it still flowed. The leaves were mostly blackened, so dried out that they looked as though they would crumble at the slightest touch.

“By the rules of debt repayment, you may harvest only one ‘prey.’”
“One prey?”
“What you hunt depends entirely on you. So too does the reward you will reap from that harvest.”

In Barbatos’s hunting grounds, the keeper of that ground, the hunter himself, spoke.

“Is that not the joy of the hunt?”

Displaying a great bow worthy of the name Demon of the Hunt.

“What a skilled hunter will encounter in the unknown depths of the forest, and what he will choose to hunt.”