The Demon’s Hunting Grounds

“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.”

Seen this way, perhaps this was a situation in which he ought to be happier than ever. Quite literally, he had gained an unexpected harvest apart from the commission reward.

‘Barbatos’s hunting grounds.’

Solomon looked at the gloomy and majestic Gothic iron gate rising before him. The iron gate, which looked heavier than anything else, began to open with a Kooong! Barbatos’s hunting grounds. Beyond it lay an unknown forest of hell.

Clack.
The moment Solomon drew the Nightfall automatic crossbow at his waist and took a few steps.

Kooong!
The iron gate behind him shut, and darkness fell once more. The birds chirping gloomily were clearly not the cries of ordinary birds Solomon knew. They were bizarrely eerie, twisted sounds of something other.

Solomon stepped toward that very forest of darkness.

[Have you ever heard of the dark forest hypothesis?]

Right then, the narrator in his head started rambling nonsense on its own.

[A hunter walks through a forest filled with unknown darkness…… He doesn’t know what is in that forest.
That is why he avoids revealing his presence as much as possible, while treating everything that appears before him as a potential threat.]

“What exactly are you trying to say?”

Solomon asked back coldly at the narrator’s nonsense.

[That is precisely why civilizations other than Earth’s are not observed in this vast dark universe. In some corner of that forest filled with darkness…… there may be a frightened hunter lurking.]

Solomon didn’t bother answering. There was no need to entertain the narrator’s nonsense. Even if it truly were a fact known by the transcendent being before him, some cosmic truth Solomon could never have imagined, that changed nothing.

What mattered here and now was not alien civilizations out in the universe, but the literal ‘prey’ lurking in the forest.

Either side could become the hunter, and either side could become the prey. That was why Solomon focused his senses more than ever and took up a guarded stance.

Rustle.
Right then, footsteps sounded from the darkness of the forest. Even so, Solomon didn’t turn his gaze toward them.

‘<Shadow Lurker>.’

He merely issued a command to the creature lurking silently beneath his feet.

Fortunately, this forest was overflowing with darkness and shadow.

‘!’

As expected, the Lurker slipped past the bushes where the footsteps were coming from and shared its vision with Solomon, and at that sight Solomon silently drew in a breath.

It was literally a ‘foot.’ A foot below the ankle had separated on its own and was wriggling like a living creature, making sounds among the bushes. A truly grotesque sight.

That foot was hopping in place rhythmically, making footsteps.

‘No, wait. If a foot is making footsteps on its own, that means…….’

Solomon was not flustered by the strangeness. Right after that, his vigilance was directed not toward the footsteps, but toward the side farthest from them.

Swoosh!

[Insight Success!]

As expected, the footsteps…… no, the living foot was only bait. A trap meant to exploit the blind spot created when attention was drawn to the sound. Who moved, and what moved, he could not tell.

But one thing was certain. Something had moved using that bait.

Fortunately, by the time Solomon realized it, he had already kicked off the ground. What narrowly flew in off-beat was a bolt. The sharp flash of the bolt tore through the air and pierced the tree trunk behind him.

And─

“Kyaaaaaaaaak!!”
“!”

A scream loud enough to tear the ears rang out. Behind him, the tree trunk where the bolt had struck was pouring out blood.

‘This place really is a goddamn nightmare.’

Even so, this was no time to flinch at the scream and lose focus. He had not forgotten how that bleeding tree had come to scream in the first place.

Solomon ran. As he ran, several Black Bird Spirits rose into the area. Together with the Shadow Lurker, several crows scattered in all directions and became Solomon’s eyes and ears. It took only an instant for the forest’s darkness to be laid bare.

It was no longer a forest filled with unknown darkness. It was now a ‘scouted zone,’ thoroughly reconnoitered by Solomon’s many eyes and ears through light and information.

And the nature of the assailant there was something that went beyond merely bizarre.

It was the same as the foot making footsteps earlier.

There was a hand. A human hand below the wrist, separated out like an independent living creature. There was only one difference. That hand was gripping an automatic crossbow.

‘Unbelievable.’

The foot drew attention with footsteps, and the hand used that opening to pull the trigger of the automatic crossbow.

[Wow, now that’s what you call perfect hand-and-foot coordination.]

Leaving the narrator’s nonsense behind, Solomon thought. The Black Bird Spirits were already watching the hand’s movements from above as clearly as if it were in his palm. Avoiding its next shot wasn’t difficult. Hiding behind a tree trunk was enough.

The trees of the forest didn’t need bolts lodged into them to bleed. They were already streaming blood, their leaves black and crumbling. As if strongly insisting that this was a forest of hell, and they were its trees.

「By the rules of the hunt, you may harvest only one prey.」
「What you hunt depends entirely on you. So too does the reward you will reap from that harvest.」

Even amid all this, Solomon turned Barbatos’s words over in his mind. He could harvest only one thing. What he hunted was up to him. In other words, the moment he hunted those hands and feet in front of him, that would be the end of it.

‘They don’t look like the kind of prey worth a real reward.’

That was what Solomon thought. Unfortunately, his greed as a TRPG player would not allow him to settle for hunting something that could be taken down this easily and claiming the reward.

So Solomon deliberately ignored the ‘hands and feet’ and ran deeper into the forest once more. Meanwhile, the Black Bird Spirits and the Shadow Lurker around the area ably supported the moving Solomon, fully playing the role of scouts.

Barbatos had been right. True to the name of his hunting grounds, the forest was overflowing with every kind of aberrant form. Including parts that made up human shapes, there were monsters easy to understand and monsters hard to understand, but none of them were truly enough to become Solomon’s chosen prey.

‘If I’m going to catch something, I should catch something more worthwhile.’

It was right then.

One Black Bird Spirit disappeared. Like a drone suddenly pierced by a sniper’s bullet. It vanished before there was even time to understand what had happened.

‘!’

Solomon didn’t panic. Among the surveillance net of Black Bird Spirits already spread out like a web in all directions, one had become a blank. Paradoxically, that brief blank was invaluable information to Solomon.

The Black Bird Spirits flying in an inverted V formation through the area broke formation and swooped toward that blank. Piercing one bird might blind an eye, but that would not work against more than a dozen birds.

And then the cameras of those birds all began capturing the figure of the sniper.

He soon realized it. It was not a sniper. The reason the Black Bird Spirits vanished one after another as though pierced by sniper fire was something else. It was not damage being intentionally dealt. They had simply flown into it themselves.

‘Aura damage!’

They were being exposed to and wounded by the golden radiance, the aura, wrapped around him. Like birds striking a window and falling of their own accord.

That was why Solomon coolly assessed the figure from a distance. It was strange. In this hunting ground of hell, watched over by a demon like Barbatos, there stood a being that, in a sense, didn’t belong here.

‘A paladin?’

It was a knight armed with pure-gold armor and a greatsword. Just as it appeared, layers upon layers of holy radiance had settled thickly around the area like an aura.

“Has a new hunter appeared?”

That very golden paladin murmured in a low voice, adjusting its greatsword in both hands.

“I beg of you.”

The paladin spoke. What filled that voice was not resolve full of conviction, nor pride.

“Please, free me from this hell……!”
“!”

It was a plea.

“Defeat me fairly and squarely! Kill me! My sin, my atonement for breaking the oath that should have been noble, please, let me carry it out here and now!”

By then, that voice was already sobbing like a child. And so, as a TRPG player, there was no way Solomon could fail to recognize what he was.

[Insight Success! Oathbreaker]

Paladins are those who swear to a god and gain their power, and when they break that oath, they are punished by divine judgment. Solomon knew that the severity of the punishment varied depending on the depth of the sin. If so, then just how great a crime had this knight committed to fall into hell? That was beyond Solomon’s knowing. At the same time, there was one thing he could clearly tell.

‘As prey, there could be nothing better.’

As Barbatos had said, by the rules of the hunt he could harvest only one thing. In that regard, the paladin now blocking Solomon’s path…… the Oathbreaker, was ideal prey.

The scattered Black Bird Spirits all gathered at once, taking formation. So did the Shadow Lurker beneath his feet.

‘Using <Shadow Lurker> openly in hell is dangerous.’

That was Solomon’s cool judgment in the situation. No matter how reliably the Shadow Lurker’s lurking attack could inflict fixed damage, this was hell. Beelzebub, the Lord of Hell. If even the city was already overflowing with eyes and ears, would hell, the territory of such a lord, be any different?

‘There are more restrictions than I expected.’

Solomon clicked his tongue silently. Even so, nothing changed.

In this situation, he had found the prey most certain to give him a reward. There was only one thing left now, what he had to do as a hunter.

As always, beneath the watch of his many Black Bird Spirits, Solomon saw his target and hid himself.

“Where, where are you……! Do not hide, hunter!”

At the same time, the voice rang out.

“Please, free me from this hell in fair combat! Do not hide! Do not hide!”
“……”

Do not hide. Shouting that, the paladin wrapped in multiple layers of aura finally began to move, swinging the absurdly massive greatsword held in both hands.

“!”

Chwaaaak!
A streak of light came crashing down.

Within that sacred radiance, resembling nothing less than a laser bombardment, came a strike that returned everything in its path to nothingness.