28. Evil (2)

Her answer made me frown, because I could already guess what the humans had wished for next. But before I could so much as get a reply out, Astraea kicked off the floor and lunged.

Her blade came to cut me down, and I twisted my body out of the way of the rushing edge, the kind of nimble move only a soldier still in active service could pull off.

She shifted her grip on the sword as if I’d let her down, and a laugh of disbelief slipped out of me.

“Doesn’t House Arne value chivalry?”
“Sorry, but before I’m a knight, I’m a general.”

Well, that one was on me. The byname “Saintess” had made me take Astraea for the sort of NPC who sprinkles heals from the back row.

Shwip—!

A piece of my collar came clean off.

Without Eve, getting out of this unhurt would’ve been nearly impossible. Astraea’s sword strikes flowed on like a dance.

“The angel granted every wish humans made. That was the angel’s reason for existing. As a result, the world became a sea of blood. Nothing remained but greed and slaughter. Belatedly, humans realized — the cause of this chaos was the angel, who had failed to rein in their desires.”

I was flat out just dodging, yet she kept chattering away diligently, which left my ears as busy as my eyes.

“So humans killed the angel. The angel did not resist. He even granted the human wish of please die for us.”

The Saintess’s blade grazed my arm. A lump of flesh dropped limply to the floor, and blood gushed from the cut.

“Give up. You cannot defeat me.”

I hadn’t known her long, but she wasn’t the type to dress herself up with bluff and bluster, so that confidence had to have a solid basis behind it.

“Die, outsider.”

She gave me no more time to think. Her sword swung, and a razor-sharp slash came rushing at me.

Just dodging isn’t going to end this.

In that instant something caught my eye, and I sprinted at it as fast as I could.

“No!”

Crash!

A great wave of dust kicked up, and in my hands was a fistful of the countless tubes pumping blood into the man.

“…Why.”

The instant she grasped what I meant to do, Astraea ran, and she ran faster than the slash she’d just launched. It was a truly astonishing speed. But what was more astonishing —

“What exactly is this, that you’d go that far for it?”

Her left arm was rolling on the floor. She had given up her own body to block her own slash.

Important enough to throw away a knight’s life in a single moment?

With her sword arm gone, the Saintess’s combat capacity dropped sharply.

“What are you plotting?”

Astraea didn’t let out a single groan at losing the arm, and she didn’t answer my question either. She just kept fighting one-armed.

Her sword arm had been severed, so now we were equally weaponless. She seemed to have trained in unarmed combat as well as swordsmanship, because every strike came fierce and sharp, but one-handed fist-work loses a noticeable amount of both power and accuracy. I dodged lightly and went about settling my curiosity.

“In your story, the angel died. But you never said whether the demon lived or died.”

Dodging this way and that, I picked up her fallen sword.

“Whatever he is, that man over there is almost certainly tied to the demon. I’ll be getting rid of him.”

I’d made up my mind the moment I reached this place and saw him: somehow, I would liberate that man.

“…I cannot allow that.”

She’d kept her silence until now, and she forced her mouth open with difficulty. At the same moment, blood poured like a flood from her severed arm.

“If that happens, we will be devoured by the Empire.”

Yet she paid no mind at all to the geyser erupting from the stump. Her eyes held nothing but madness, and it was toward that madness that I spoke.

“That’s not so bad.”
“What?”
“Pledging loyalty to the Empire. I’m saying it’s not so bad.”

It was true. In the real-world timeline, House Arne does end up pledging its loyalty to the Empire, and of course the Empire respected the house in return and didn’t look down on it. If anything, it’s no exaggeration to say House Arne became a fairly famous knightly house thanks to the Empire’s wholehearted support.

“I don’t know why you hate the Empire so much, but really, it’s not so bad.”
“Silence! What do you know, that you would spout off so carelessly!”

The Saintess’s face, which hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle until now, flushed mottled red and white.

Does she hate the Empire that much?

Well, I wasn’t particularly curious. I took a proper grip on her sword, and into the heart of the Saintess, blood dripping, her will to resist crushed, I drove it straight in.

A rather hollow ending.

“This makes it all for nothing, though.”

By killing the Saintess, I’d given up on this trial. The objective of the Trial of Wisdom is to find the answer to why the Saintess vanished, so the moment she died, it became absolutely uncompletable.

“Never thought I’d end up retaking it.”

I’d acted pretty recklessly this time. I’d helped Beron escape the dungeon, broken into the Saintess’s chamber, and stirred up a commotion.

I did collect a decent amount of data.

Hoping for a satisfying first-try raid clear is greed, so all I could do was promise myself the next attempt.

She had a point. I had no memory of Rose telling us the way back. I thought it over and answered.

“What if we just die?”

“This world’s made of Rose’s magic anyway. And the body I’m possessing right now is a fake in the end. So if I die, I should go back to my original body, right?”

“Probably.”

Leaving Eve’s worry behind, I went up to the man bound at the center.

Did an NPC like this exist in the game?

I kept examining every part of him, while he went on staring blankly into empty air —

— and then I took hold, with both hands, of the thick tubes piercing his chest.

“I’ve got to check this for the next playthrough, at least. What happens when I pull these out.”

I tore them out without hesitation.

Phwoosh—!

The connection points burst open and a fountain of blood shot up, and thanks to that, the iron stench pulsed through the whole underground chamber. His supply cut off, the man’s body twitched and spasmed, then drooped like a puppet with its strings snipped. There was no heartbeat, no faint breath to feel.

I nodded as I answered.

“As you can see.”

I’d pulled out his life-support apparatus, so the result was obvious.

I was just thinking I ought to investigate more before going straight back to reality when —

“…Hk.”

A bone-chilling battle-shout came from behind me. I turned my head on reflex, and there stood the Saintess I’d thought was dead.

At the cross-section of the severed arm, bone and muscle were knitting themselves back together. She pulled the sword from her own chest with both hands, and flesh frothed up and filled the hole with red bubbles.

A stunned laugh escaped me at the sight.

“So this is the secret they called the Saintess’s Miracle.”

Only then did I grasp the complete truth.

“You’d already gone through demonification.”

This world had an item called Demon Blood, and its effect was simple.

“An item that amplifies your DV gauge and forces demonification when you take it.”

Astraea, now revived, kicked off the floor with bloodshot eyes and rose to her feet.

“The reason the Imperial army couldn’t push them back was never any Saintess’s Miracle.”

Take the blood from the man, feed it to all the soldiers, and force demonification on them. That was the true identity of the secret called the Saintess’s Miracle.

“But how is that even possible? Demonification means you can’t keep your reason.”

That question of mine still hadn’t been resolved.

“You… you wretch…!”

Unfortunately, Astraea had no intention of resolving my curiosity. She picked up her fallen sword and rushed in, and I took a defensive stance on instinct.

Whoosh—!

But her blade didn’t come at me. Her eyes were fixed on one single place, and it wasn’t me. Her sword flew at the man’s neck.

Clang—!

It kept bouncing off, unable to cut him.

“Damn it!”

Still she didn’t give up, swinging her sword like a madwoman.

“Guh—!”

Soon the recoil flung her back.

“What’s this?”

Up close, I could see clumps of red blood formed around the man’s neck like a protective shield. Then, in an instant, the blood pooled on the floor surged up of its own accord and began wrapping around him, so I grabbed Astraea and hurriedly cleared the area.

Vrmmm—.

Red light pulsed inside the cocoon of blood. It gave off a hideous life-force, like an egg right on the verge of hatching.

I asked Astraea, who I now had cradled in my arms, “What is that thing?”

The answer that came back was something I couldn’t believe.

“That thing — that is the demon.”
“What?”
“If I survive, I will explain.”

She threw herself out of my arms and once more drove her sword at the cocoon.

“Begone.”

A low voice unfurled from inside the cocoon, and at the same time the blood-fluid exploded in every direction and slammed into Astraea.

KABOOM—!

“Gak—!”

Unable even to scream properly, she went flying like a paper doll. Her body smashed into the stone wall, bricks rained down in a clattering shower, and the sword slipped from her hand and rolled across the floor.

“Ugh…”

She sagged limp, looking like she’d lost consciousness.

Crunch, ka-runch.

With the obstacle gone, the man’s body burst out of the blood cocoon and began to twist in earnest. His scrawny build swelled to enormous size, sharp spike-wings of hardened blood sprouted from his back, and a crown-shaped horn rose above his head.

Eve screamed, gripped with terror.

Eve was right. The man — no, this demon — that had appeared before my eyes was, by any measure, a calamity. The overwhelming dread it radiated would have made the people of this world lose the will to fight and drop to their knees.

But.

“…Ha.”

What slipped from my mouth wasn’t a scream. It was a stunned laugh.

Fear? Dread?

No. What was filling my chest was a strange sense of welcome.

I stared dead-on into the monster’s burning red eyes and curled the corners of my mouth upward.

“Eve. Does that look like a calamity to you?”

“It looks different to me.”

As I said, the people of this world would have lost the will to fight and dropped to their knees. But I am not a person of this world.

To be precise, I’m the man who conquered this world. A grizzled veteran.

“Lord of the Blood Star — Blood Lord.”

“That’s that guy’s name.”

The first large-scale raid boss in Demonic Frontier.

“To newbies he’s known as the Wailing Wall.¹ He’s got an attack-nullification pattern and an insta-kill gimmick, so if you don’t know the strategy, you can’t beat him.”

In a word, for veterans like me, he’s a farming sandbag you could clear with your eyes closed.

Eve looked baffled by words she didn’t understand, but there was no real need to explain them to her.

“I’ll show you.”

I lowered my stance. His attack pattern, the timing of his breath, even the 0.1-second moment his weak point opens up — my fingers, my brain, all of it remembers.

I kicked off the floor, about to rush him. I had no weapon, so the plan was to grab Astraea’s fallen sword.

“That’s a variable.”

But he was faster. The Saintess’s sword rose into the giant demon’s hand.

Taking on a raid boss bare-handed, and an armed one at that?

“Finally, he’s matching the difficulty to my level.”

Not impossible, but it would get a little annoying. That’s what I was thinking when —

“Catch!”

A familiar voice came from inside the darkness near the entrance. It was Beron, who hadn’t followed us in but had been watching from outside.

Shoom—!

The silver flash he’d thrown cut through the air and came flying at me, and on reflex I stretched out my hand and snatched it.

“You crazy bastard! You’re supposed to wait until it hits the floor before you grab it!”

When I looked, it was the dagger he’d snatched from the jailer earlier.

Beron shouted from far off.

“You crazy bastard, don’t die! If you die, I’m pretty sure I’m dead too!”

His words said otherwise, but Beron was smiling, with no trace of any fear of death to be seen.

“…Who’s calling who crazy.”

I flipped the dagger into a reverse grip.

All right. The raid begins.