Rescue In The Dark Of Night

To head for the village during the night, I left the hut together with Isha.

The moon shining in the night sky above us was… just one.

Yeah, I guess having seven of them really had been the strange part.

Compared to the world with seven moons, this world contained far less mana.

There probably weren’t many beings here capable of injuring me now that I was a Mid-Ranking Devil.

With that in mind, there were broadly two ways I could rescue Isha’s mother.

The first was to sneak into the village during the night and secretly help her escape.

The second was to wait until dawn, storm the execution site, smash through every obstacle in our way, and rescue her by force.

Whichever one I chose would greatly affect what happened afterward.

For example, the advantage of the first option—secretly helping Isha’s mother escape—was that there would probably be fewer pursuers.

If we fled far away and hid ourselves, I doubted they would make an especially determined effort to find us.

The disadvantage was that Isha and her mother, after being hurt by that new priest, would have to run away without ever striking back.

Even if Isha’s mother really was a witch, I couldn’t stomach the way they’d beaten her daughter to force a confession out of her.

I wanted to make them pay at least a little, but if I did, the Church might take it as an insult to its honor and send a large number of pursuers after us.

As for the second option, storming the execution site had the advantages of making me feel extremely refreshed and humiliating the Church enough to damage its authority.

Incidentally, if I chose that option, I’d summon Bella before charging in.

Naturally, if I took that route, the Church would probably do everything in its power to destroy us.

I had no intention of obediently letting them kill me, and if resistance led to more resistance until the conflict kept escalating, the next step would be the formation of an anti-Church faction.

I might end up gathering witches like Isha’s mother together and openly opposing the Church.

But would it really be right to go that far?

I wouldn’t mind putting in a little extra effort to save other oppressed people, but if we started a war, I would surely end up killing a great many people.

Among them would probably be parents who had simply believed in the Church’s teachings—people with children around Isha’s age, or perhaps even younger.

…………All right. Let’s go with quietly rescuing her.

We could think about the rest as it happened.

If all I wanted to do was pick a fight with the Church, I could do that whenever I pleased, so there was no need to go all out from the very beginning.

Isha looked up at me curiously as I stood there deep in thought, my expression changing repeatedly, and I casually scooped her up into my arms.

She’d been assaulted, released, returned to the hut, and then summoned me. She was probably too worked up to realize it, but she had to be thoroughly exhausted.

I figured I should conserve as much of her strength as possible.

Isha looked surprised, but she didn’t resist.

She had probably learned from our interactions since summoning me that resisting was pointless.

She was astonishingly light in my arms, which gave me a sense of just how poor the food situation in this world must have been.

I needed to rescue her mother quickly, flee somewhere far away, and then let her eat plenty once she was somewhere safe so she could grow properly. In various ways.

It wasn’t as though I was thinking lecherously or anything, but girls looked healthier with a little flesh on them.

Annie, my friend from the previous world, had been quite impressive in that regard.

She moved around constantly, so she certainly wasn’t fat, but, well, the places that were supposed to stand out made their presence very clearly known. She had been generously proportioned.

If I’d had stronger desires of that sort back then, I suspected Annie and I might have grown closer in a somewhat different way.

Though my summoner at the time, Garmon-san, had been such an old man that he eventually died of old age and had naturally been well past such urges, so I had been strongly influenced by that too.

After walking for a while, Isha and I arrived at the nearby village.

Now the real work began.

Still holding Isha, I warned her not to make a sound, then lightly stamped one foot against the ground.

The surrounding darkness wrapped itself around our bodies, concealing us within the night.

Our destination was the Church, beneath which there was apparently a prison where Isha’s mother was being held.

I had no idea why a church needed a prison in the first place, but having such a clear destination was extremely convenient.

When I entered the Church, I was honestly a little nervous, but nothing unusual happened.

Garmon-san had told me about the existence of angels in the previous world, so I’d worried that it would be troublesome if this world’s Church had some connection to them.

Without making a single footstep, we merged with the darkness and searched through the Church.

We even found the new priest in question asleep in his bed, so I directed a fervent wish toward him that all the hair on his head would fall out.

I hadn’t actually used Magic, but he had still been subjected to the malicious thoughts of a devil.

Surely that put considerable stress on his scalp.

Then we descended underground, and sure enough, beyond a set of iron bars was a woman— Isha’s mother—with both her hands and feet chained.

I covered Isha’s mouth before she could cry out at the sight of her mother, who bore obvious signs of having been abused, and entered the cell.

Yeah, this wasn’t something you’d normally say about a woman, but honestly, she smelled terrible.

It wasn’t Isha’s mother’s fault, of course, but leaving her chained up after tormenting her, unable even to relieve herself properly, was truly horrific treatment, and the stench was severe.

Once we got back, I supposed I’d have to give her mother a full wash too…

The cell lock opened easily enough when I inserted my fingertip into the keyhole, reshaped it, and turned it.

My body was made of spiritual particles, so as long as I could manipulate them, a trick like this wasn’t particularly difficult.

The sound of the lock opening woke Isha’s mother, who stared at us in shock.

I released the darkness surrounding us and held my index finger to my lips, signaling for her to remain quiet.

Her eyes widened when she saw Isha in my arms, but she seemed to understand my intention and gave a single nod.

She was weakened and surely confused, yet she was clearly an intelligent woman.

I opened the chains around her hands and feet the same way I’d opened the cell lock.

After that, all that remained was to use gate Magic, taught to me directly by Annie, my friend from another world, and travel straight back to the hut we’d come from.

“You can talk now.”

I set Isha down and spoke to her mother, who had remained stunned ever since seeing both Isha and the gate I’d created.

After hearing my words and seeing the hut that was their home, she finally seemed to understand what had happened.

Isha and her mother embraced each other tightly, both shedding tears of joy.

Calling it a moving reunion wouldn’t have been an exaggeration in the slightest.

The circumstances they had endured had been truly harsh.

Smiling in satisfaction at having managed to save them, I… decided that since Isha had now picked up her mother’s smell and grime, I would wash both of them thoroughly together once again.