76. What Scent Am I?

“The Demon Realms number seventy-two in all. This place is my own domain — the Fifteenth Demon Realm.”

Sylvia had come back to life, perfectly whole. Whether that was Eligos’s magic or some quirk of the Abyss itself, I couldn’t tell.

Once you clear an Abyss, you’re supposed to be locked out of it entirely for a whole month.

Maybe that was why I hadn’t expected Eligos to come back so soon.

“Neither I nor any of my kin can ever truly die in this place. Even should the soul itself be shattered, so long as that life ended within the Fifteenth Demon Realm, they will open their eyes once more.”

No sooner had she finished speaking than black light wound itself around the corpses scattered across the arena.

“Lady Lillian! Is Lady Lillian unharmed?!”

The spearmen were the first to rise, shouting as they scanned the ground around them.

“There, there. That’s my boy.”

Beside them, a cavalryman hugged his Red Hare, tears welling in his eyes.

“Phew… looks like it’s really over.”

The archers, who’d worn the hideous faces of zombies, got their human color back too. They ran trembling hands over their own limbs and let out a long breath, relief and emptiness tangled together inside it.

“…”

Sylvia and the other women of the mage corps brushed the dust from their robes and straightened their ranks, as though reclaiming their usual poise.

But not everyone had found their peace again.

“Y-you cowardly bastard! That brat used us as hostages—!”

One of the shield-bearers came charging at me, bloodlust radiating off him. One look at his face told me he was the one who’d died last. I was still hanging limp in Lillian’s vines, in no shape to resist.

“Watch closely. And learn what it means that they never die.”

— KWAAANG—!

A hulking mass of sheer weight came ripping through the air as a massive black horse wreathed in pitch-dark smoke crashed down squarely atop the charging shield-bearer.

— Crunch, crrrack—!

The shield-bearer who’d only just come back to life was reduced to a puddle on the ground once more, without so much as a scream.

“Ugh… good lord.”

Lillian squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered. She seemed lost for words at the cruelty of it. Only a moment ago Eligos had been smiling so benevolently; now she had crushed her own underling flat in a single instant.

But Eligos, gripping the black horse’s reins above that wretched scene, spoke with lofty composure.

“Do not fret. This place will allow no further harm to come to you.”
“Neeeiiiigh—!”
“Abigor says he will protect you, too.”
“Its name is Abigor?”
“Indeed. A precious child, gifted to me by a friend.”
“When you say ‘friend,’ you mean the master of another Demon Realm?”
“You could say as much.”

Apparently even demons kept private ties of their own. Eligos spoke as she swung up onto Abigor.

“You are clever, so surely you grasp well enough what I am about to say?”

Her crimson eyes turned to me. The intent in them was so plain that Lillian held her breath, watching for what would come next.

Eve understood exactly what this meant, too. This was recruitment dressed up as an offer, a demand for surrender in all but name.

I looked down at my broken left arm and spoke.

“Yes, I understand perfectly. But even if I became your kin, surely you wouldn’t treat me the same as that lot rolling around in the dirt down there?”

Eligos narrowed her eyes at the question, intrigued.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Word is, the minions here don’t even get proper meals, let alone a place to sleep. They scrape by on stale bread for a whole month, from what I hear.”

I tossed out the bit of intel I’d picked up from my talk with Sylvia, and Eligos burst out laughing.

“Of course I would never set you on the same footing as those wretches. You shall be my right hand, a being apart. You will eat what I eat, and sleep where I sleep.”
“…Sleep together, you said?”

Lillian, who had been listening in beside me, flushed red and recoiled in alarm.

But Eligos went further still.

“And if you wish it, you may take my body as you please. To be embraced by the strong is a rather pleasant thing.”

“Arden! What on earth are you thinking right now?! No — absolutely not!”

I let the two of them fuss beside me and turned it over for a moment.

“Not bad terms at all.”
“Arden!!”
“But.”
“Out of everything you just said — minus the ‘taking your body’ part — I’ll make you a counter-offer on those very same terms.”
“…A counter-offer, you say?”
“Hand authority over the Fifteenth Demon Realm to me.”

Every minion, Sylvia among them, went rigid as one. But that wasn’t the end of it.

“Serve me as your master. Do that, and I’ll promise you steaming hot meat every morning and a soft, downy bed.”
“You — become my comrade.”

“Regrettable, but a knight is not the sort of fool who knows nothing but battle. Where, pray, is the gain for me in that preposterous proposal of yours? I had taken your mind for a sharp one… how truly disappointing.”

At that chilly appraisal, Lillian tugged frantically at my sleeve.

“Right, Arden! Quit joking around! Just swallow your pride for now, become her kin, and at least get yourself healed first, yeah? What if you die like this!”

But I wasn’t about to back down. If anything, I gave Eligos an even more shameless grin.

“Let me make the offer one more time. Serve me as your master. Do that, and I’ll give you the seat at my right hand. Just so you know — that seat happens to be quite sought-after.”
“…Right hand?”

Eligos asked it with a dumbfounded look, and beside me Lillian cut in, eyes gone round.

“Hold on, Arden! Wasn’t your right hand obviously supposed to be me? After everything I’ve been through because of you!”
“You’re still only a candidate for right hand, Sis.”
“What? Then who else is even in the running?!”
“Well, for starters — Sister Seraphina and Big Brother Valerian?”
“…Sis is the Empire’s Knight Commander, and Big Bro wouldn’t have the faintest interest in a seat like that.”

Lillian shot back as if it were the most absurd thing she’d ever heard, but I just shrugged and kept counting them off.

“And that’s not all. There’s Sylvia here, leader of the mage corps.”

At the mention of her name, Sylvia, off at a distance, gave a start, then clenched her fists as a resolute light came into her eyes.

“And then there’s Elli, growing frighteningly stronger by the day. See? More candidates than you’d have thought, hmm?”
“…A more hotly contested post than I had imagined.”
“Well — it’s not called the right hand for nothing.”

Lillian and I broke off mid-banter and laughed.

“Let us end the jest there.”

Eligos pulled the reins, and Abigor lifted one massive leg and stamped it down onto the arena floor.

— THOOM!

The playful mood vanished in an instant.

“As I have already told you, your body stands on the very brink of collapse. Come into my kin. Do so, and even should that frail body reach its limit and break apart, you will open your eyes again in this place.”

Eligos meant to prove her words were no mere temptation. With a light wave of her hand, black light settled over the remains of the shield-bearer Abigor had crushed to a bloody pulp a moment before.

“F-forgive me!”

The fully resurrected straggler pressed his forehead low to the ground. Eligos smiled down at him, merciful, and replied.

“Humans have ever striven to grasp deathless life. You too are human, fated to die one day. I shall deliver you from that fate.”

— Crunch—!

Even as she spoke, Abigor stamped down again, grinding the prostrate straggler into pulp. Dark-red light wound around him once more.

“P-please, spare me!”
“Those who have become my kin each came to me bearing a story of their own.”

— Crunch—!

“Aaaaargh!”
“That one came meaning to dump a friend’s corpse here and blundered in by mistake. I deliberated whether to kill him, then took him in as kin.”

— Thunk.

The black spear Eligos hurled lodged squarely in the shield-bearer’s throat. Once again, he met his end without managing a single scream.

“Why take a man like that in as your kin? We’ve only spoken briefly, but you seem to hold chivalry in very high regard, Lady Eligos.”

This time, Eligos did not bring him back. Yet nothing about her suggested she meant to forgive him.

“This man is a human with a deeply wicked heart. He delights in tormenting those weaker than himself, and bows his head low before those who are stronger.”

The minions watched Eligos with fear in their eyes. From those looks, I gathered this was not the first time something like this had happened.

“Humans have a saying — strong to the weak, weak to the strong. But it is mistaken. Even a child, given but a single blade, can kill a grown man far larger than himself. What matters is not whether one is stronger than I am. It is how many more of the wicked I am willing to receive.”
“It… it hurts… it HURTS, you damned bastard!”
“And so I took this man in. So that I might breathe in the scent of evil for all eternity.”

Astonishingly, the revived shield-bearer spat curses and flung himself at Eligos.

“Having breathed it in, I find this scent never changes.”

— BANG! Crunch!

The shield-bearer was scattered across the floor, his limbs torn to pieces. Unable to bear the gruesome sight, Lillian clamped her eyes shut.

But I felt no urge to gag, no churn in my gut.

“Then what scent am I?”

For the first time, Eligos laughed.

I realized then that every smile I’d seen through our whole conversation had been nothing but a mask. The laugh that carried her true self was demon to the core.

“It is precisely because I wish to know that I make you this offer. So give me your answer now — and let us have done with these trifling word-games.”

Accepting Eligos’s offer, as Lillian had said, might not be such a bad choice. If I sealed a contract on the condition that I could operate outside the Abyss as well, then once the coming scenario with that fellow called That One arrived, I’d be holding the ultimate insurance policy: resurrection. Break the body, and you wake again in this place. It was the same unreal cheat code from back when this had only been a game I played.

If only I didn’t know any better.

Of course, the moment you became kin, your soul belonged to your master, and you became a puppet that could not defy its orders.

And there was more. I knew all too well who the ‘friend’ was that had gifted Eligos the black horse, Abigor. He was a demon whose cruelty ran on a wholly different level from hers, one who would someday bring irreparable loss of human life down on the world of men. I couldn’t place myself beneath anyone who kept such a monster for company.

“What is your ambition, Lady Eligos?”
“My ambition… Nothing so grand. I mean only to lock away every evil in the world within this place.”
“Every evil?”
“Indeed. The villain who slays the very parents who bore him for a single coin; the hypocrite who sells out a friend to line his own belly; every last piece of filth who murders a comrade, dresses it up as an accident, and walks off with the spoils — every one of them, I shall gather as my kin.”

Eligos drove her black spear down into the floor, and every last minion shuddered as one.

“And here in this arena, I shall make them kill one another for all eternity. That is the reason I was born, and my way of managing these unpleasant scents.”

Madness hung in her eyes. I met it head-on and spoke.

“Sylvia.”

Sylvia, still trembling, barely pulled herself together to answer.

“…Yes, Young Master.”
“Attack me with your magic. Right now.”

Not only Sylvia but even Lillian, beside me, caught her breath for an instant. I cut my eyes toward my own limply dangling limbs, pointing them out to the bewildered Sylvia, and went on without a flicker of feeling.

“…Huh?”
“I won’t be taking questions.”
“…”
“Any kind of magic bolt will do. A shock bolt to fry my brain, fine. A frost bolt to shatter me head to toe, that works too. If you’d rather not dirty your own hands, have your comrades do it. And if even that sits wrong with you, then ask those archers over there to put an arrow through my heart.”

The cold madness that had filled Eligos’s eyes was slowly draining away.

“Right now — by whatever means, kill me.”