The Devil And The Sorcerer

Arrows came whistling in one after another.

Standing in front of the crouching male sorcerer and Annie to shield them, I took arrow after arrow in my throat, face, chest, and elsewhere.

“W-Wait, Lept-kun, are you all right?!”

Even while being protected, Annie noticed the state I was in and asked almost with a scream, but I was still a devil.

Ah, though this did hurt a little. Why was that?

Oh, the arrowheads were imbued with mana.

“Yeah, looks like they’ve got Sharpening Sorcery on them, so they hurt just a tiny bit. But it’s about the same as accidentally scratching your skin on a branch while walking through the woods. So, what should we do? Fight back?”

This much was nothing.

If she wanted me to defend, I could defend, and if she wanted me to counterattack, I could do that too.

But either way, it would reveal something about how dangerous I was, so I deliberately took no action and waited for Annie to decide.

“No. If you’re really all right… You are all right, aren’t you? We’ve achieved our objective, so let’s run.”

I nodded at Annie’s words, though she still looked a little uneasy.

I would have liked to give her a reassuring smile, but with arrows sticking out of my face, it came out a little strained.

The enemy seemed confused that I wouldn’t fall and continued firing arrows from a distance.

But if I kept refusing to go down, they would eventually switch to offensive sorcery.

If we were going to escape, now was the time.

I grabbed the crouching Annie and the male sorcerer, then jumped with them through a gate I created with Magic.

Around two months had passed since Annie summoned me into this world.

During that time, we had rescued more than a dozen sorcerers who were being attacked and nearly killed by unknown assailants, then sheltered them at newly established secret bases.

Of course, everyone already knew those “unknown assailants” were from the Sorcerers’ Association, but it seemed the enemy had also noticed our existence and movements and had begun devising various countermeasures.

That ambush just now had been fairly dangerous.

I was one thing, but Annie and the male sorcerer were human, and an arrow striking the wrong place could easily have killed either of them instantly.

The fact that Sharpening Sorcery had been applied to the arrows confirmed that there had been a sorcerer among the enemy, so there was at least a slight possibility that my existence had been exposed during this incident.

Ideally, they would mistake me for something like a golem or undead creature that arrows simply couldn’t affect, but from now on, I needed to account for the possibility that they would prepare countermeasures against spirits and devils.

The Gate Magic I had just used hadn’t taken us directly to one of our secret bases.

We still didn’t know whether the rescued male sorcerer would decide to join us, and if someone had placed tracking sorcery on him, bringing him straight there would compromise the base we’d worked so hard to establish.

Naturally, the same applied to the arrows still embedded throughout my body, so I pulled them out one by one, checked each for tracking sorcery, and burned them.

To a human, the sight must have looked extremely abnormal.

“A-Annie-kun, just what is he?”

There was a hint of fear in the rescued male sorcerer’s eyes as he looked at me.

Annie nodded once in response to his question.

“His name is Lept. He is a devil who once served as the partner of Archwizard Garmon. I became acquainted with him while Garmon-san was still alive, and I am currently under contract with him.”

Perhaps to emphasize that I was safe, she placed a hand on my shoulder.

Yeah, I’d removed the arrows, and all the holes had already closed up, so I probably didn’t look frightening anymore.

“You must know how greatly Garmon-san contributed to the Sorcerers’ Association during his lifetime by announcing many new forms of sorcery. Lept was his fellow researcher at the time, and… yes, now he is our hope.”

At Annie’s words, the way the male sorcerer looked at me changed.

Still, had Garmon-san really been that famous…?

Even though he had lived decades ago, sorcerers of the present day still respected him.

As expected of my teacher.

“…For a devil to become our hope. What bitter irony. No, even the Association that was founded so sorcerers could help one another ended up like this. Perhaps the darkness in human hearts runs far deeper.”

The male sorcerer shook his head and murmured weakly.

But several seconds later, when he raised his face again, strength and intelligence had returned to his eyes.

Then, to my surprise, he held out his hand toward me.

“Thank you for saving me. It’s an honor to meet the renowned Lept of Gravity Sorcery. My name is Gree Earth. Garmon-san and my late master studied under the same teacher, you see. I feel a certain kinship with you. I hope we can work well together.”

At Gree’s words, I took the hand he offered.

The fact that Gree didn’t hesitate to shake hands with a devil raised my opinion of him.

In truth, every sorcerer Annie and I had rescued so far had been a person with backbone.

They had been hunted precisely because they had possessed the courage to voice opposition to the bloated Sorcerers’ Association after it absorbed sorcerers who had once lived under state control, so in a sense, that was only natural.

Little by little, capable people were gathering on our side.

The enemy was definitely beginning to adapt to our movements, but they probably still couldn’t imagine that a high-ranking devil was supporting the opposition.

I was unusually willing to move around, but most other high-ranking devils remained close to their Devil Kings and rarely answered summons.

So for a little while longer, we should still be able to stay one step ahead of the enemy.

But I knew better than to ever underestimate the sorcerers of this world.

There were two main reasons I had managed to rise all the way to high-ranking devil.

One was that inheriting the existence of that old man, Devil King Grimor, had caused my own growth to become abnormally rapid.

The other was that Garmon-san had taught me the fundamental abilities I needed to survive as a devil in this world.

If there were several sorcerers equal to Garmon-san in ability, then once they realized what I was, they would undoubtedly develop effective countermeasures against me.

Before that happened, we needed to gather as many opposition sorcerers as possible and build a force capable of deterring the Sorcerers’ Association.

That was the only way to stop this conflict while keeping the number of casualties as low as possible.