28. Evil (2)

Her answer made me knit my brow. I could already guess what the humans had wished for next.

But before I could so much as get a word out, Astraea kicked off the floor and lunged. Her blade lashed out to cut me down, and I twisted aside, dodging the rushing edge.

Only a soldier on active duty could move like that.

She adjusted her grip on the sword as if disappointed, and a disbelieving laugh slipped out of me.

“Isn’t House Arne supposed to value chivalry?”

“Sorry, but before I’m a knight, I’m a general.”

I owned up to my mistake. Thanks to the byname “Saintess,” I’d pegged Astraea as an NPC who just sprinkled heals from the back row.

Shwip—!

A piece of my collar got slashed clean off.

Without Eve’s help, getting away unscathed would have been all but 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.”

While I had my hands full just dodging, she chattered on, so my ears stayed 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 chunk of flesh dropped limply to the floor, and blood gushed from the cut.

“Give up. You cannot defeat me.”

It hadn’t been long, but from what I’d seen, she wasn’t the type to dress herself up in bluffs and bluster. Her confidence rested on something solid.

“Die, outsider.”

The Saintess gave me no more time to think. She swung her sword, 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 for it as fast as I could.

“No!”

Crash!

A great wave of dust kicked up.

Clutched in my hands was a fistful of the countless tubes pumping blood into the man.

“…Why.”

The instant she grasped what I meant, Astraea moved faster than the slash she’d just thrown. Astonishing speed.

But something else astonished me even more.

“What is this thing, that you would go so far?”

Her left arm lay rolling on the floor. She’d given up her own body to block the slash she’d thrown.

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

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

“What are you plotting?”

Astraea didn’t let out a single groan over the pain of losing her arm. Rather than answer my question, she fought on one-handed.

Her sword arm was gone, which left us evenly matched, both of us weaponless now. She’d clearly trained in unarmed combat as well as the blade, and every strike came fierce and sharp. But one-handed, her fist-work lost a noticeable amount of power and accuracy.

I dodged lightly and got my answer.

“In your story, the angel died. But the fate of the demon was never revealed.”

Weaving this way and that, I scooped up the Saintess’s fallen sword.

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

From the moment I’d reached this place and laid eyes on the man, I’d made up my mind to free him somehow.

“…I cannot allow that.”

She’d held her silence until now, and forcing her mouth open took visible effort. At the same moment, blood poured in a flood from her severed arm.

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

But she paid no mind to the geyser of blood erupting from her stump; her eyes held nothing but madness.

I spoke toward that madness.

“That’s not so bad.”

“What?”
“Pledging loyalty to the Empire. It’s not so bad, I said.”

It was true. In the real-world timeline, House Arne does ultimately pledge its loyalty to the Empire. And the Empire respects the house in return, never looking down on it. If anything, it’s no stretch to say House Arne became a fairly famous knightly house thanks to the Empire’s wholehearted backing.

“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?

Not that I was particularly curious about it.

I got a proper grip on the Saintess’s sword. And then I drove it straight into her heart, blood dripping, her will to resist crushed.

A rather hollow ending.

“Doing this means it was all for nothing, though.”

By killing the Saintess, I’d given up on the trial. The objective of the Trial of Wisdom was to find the answer to why the Saintess vanished. The moment she died, the trial became impossible to complete.

“To think I’ll be retaking it.”

I’d been pretty reckless this time around. I’d sprung Beron from the dungeon, broken into the Saintess’s chamber, and kicked up a commotion.

I did collect a decent amount of data.

Hoping for a clean first-try raid clear was just greed. All I could do was promise myself a next attempt.

Eve had a point; I had no memory of Rose ever telling us the way back. After thinking it over, I answered.

“What if we just die?”

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

“Probably.”

Leaving Eve’s worry behind, I approached the man bound at the center.

Did an NPC like this exist in the game?

I went on examining every part of the man, who still stared blankly into empty air.

Then I grabbed the thick tubes piercing his chest with both hands.

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

Without hesitation, I tore the tubes out.

Phwoosh—!

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

I nodded as I answered.

“As you can see.”

I’d ripped out his life-support; the result was obvious.

I was just thinking I’d need to investigate more before heading straight back to reality.

“…Hk.”

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

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

The sight of it pulled a stunned laugh out of me.

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

Only then did I grasp the complete truth.

“You’d already undergone demonification.”

This world had an item called Demon Blood. Its effect was simple.

“An item that, when ingested, amplifies the DV gauge and forces demonification.”

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 wasn’t anything like the Saintess’s Miracle.”

Extract the blood from the man, feed it to every soldier, and force demonification on them all. That was the real identity behind the secret they called the Saintess’s Miracle.

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

My question still hadn’t been answered.

“You… you bastard…!”

Unfortunately, Astraea had no intention of satisfying my curiosity. She snatched up her fallen sword and rushed in.

I instinctively took a defensive stance.

Whoosh—!

But Astraea’s blade never came at me. Her eyes were locked on a single spot, and it wasn’t me. Her sword flew toward the man’s neck.

Clang—!

Her blade kept bouncing off, unable to bite into the man’s neck.

“Damn it!”

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

“Guh—!”

Then the recoil flung her back.

“What’s this?”

Up close, I could see clumps of red blood gathered around the man’s neck like a protective shield. In an instant, the blood pooled on the floor surged up on its own and began wrapping around him.

I grabbed Astraea and hurriedly cleared the area.

Vrmmm—.

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

I asked Astraea, now 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.”

Astraea threw herself out of my arms and once more drove her sword toward the cocoon.

“Begone.”

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

KABOOM—!

“Gak—!”

Astraea, unable even to get a scream out, was sent flying like a paper doll. Her body smashed into the stone wall, and bricks rained down in a clattering shower. The sword slipped from her hand and rolled across the floor.

“Ugh…”

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

Crunch, ka-runch.

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

Eve screamed, gripped with terror.

Eve was right. The man, or rather the demon, now standing before my eyes was a calamity by any measure. It radiated an overwhelming dread, the kind that would have made the people of this world lose the will to fight and sink to their knees.

But.

“…Ha.”

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

Fear? Dread? No. What filled my chest was a strange sense of welcome.

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

“Eve. In your eyes, does that look like a calamity?”

“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 the name of that guy over there.”

He was 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 the words she didn’t know, but there was no real need to explain them to her.

“I’ll show you.”

I lowered my stance. That guy’s attack pattern, the timing of his breath, even the 0.1-second window when his weak point opens up: my fingers, my brain, all of it remembers.

I kicked off the floor, about to rush him. With no weapon of my own, the plan was to grab Astraea’s fallen sword.

“That’s a variable.”

But he was faster. The Saintess’s sword rose up 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 me.”

Not impossible, just a little annoying. That was the thought running through my head when it happened.

“Catch!”

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

Shoom—!

A silver flash he’d thrown cut through the air toward me, and I reflexively shot out a hand and snatched it from the air.

“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 swiped from the jailer earlier.

Beron shouted from far off.

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

His words said otherwise, but Beron was smiling. Not a trace of any fear of death anywhere on his face.

“…Who’s calling who crazy.”

I flipped the dagger into a reverse grip.

All right. The raid begins.