Chapter 21

“What…?”

Hamel muttered in a stupid voice.

Hamel, who carelessly looked at the monster, met its gaze.

Through the burned, sagging skin, a dim, muddled eye was visible.

A blue eye, the same color as Hamel’s.

“Ugh.”

Hamel lowered his head and retched.

Thick, blood-mixed saliva slid down his lips.

“Gurg… hch.”

That was….

His father.

He had unknowingly cut and burned his father.

When sensation returned to the hand that had swung the sword, the nausea grew more violent.

After coughing up blood for a long time, Hamel trembled and lifted his head.

“Is that all?”

David asked with a somewhat disappointed expression.

“…I wasn’t expecting much more than this, though.”

David, who had been looking down indifferently, soon turned away as if his interest had cooled.

He then moved straight toward the monster.

“It’s not that I have a particular grudge against father, but….”

Standing before the monster, he thrust his staff forward and murmured.

“Please deactivate this troublesome illusory barrier.”

“…!”

Hamel realized what he was trying to do and reached out.

He strained his dry, cracked throat and squeezed out a sound.

“Sto…p, please.”

─Flinch

David turned his head toward him.

Then he smiled brightly.

“Nope.”

The next moment.

─Crack

A massive black pillar of shadow plunged down over the monster’s head.

The head was crushed beyond recognition.

The monster’s body, which had been twitching slightly, went limp.

“Ah….”

Hamel stood with his mouth open in a daze.

But only for a moment; a thin sound escaped his mouth.

“….”

He thought it didn’t matter if he died.

It was a father he hadn’t seen in over six years.

He had never even sent a letter during that time.

A man who had always treated him coldly in childhood.

But.

“…!”

Foamy blood bubbled through his clenched teeth.

He wanted to stand up and cut David’s throat right away.

But his body remained motionless.

No, it was getting colder and colder with time.

Now even the convulsions came only intermittently.

It was he himself whose end was approaching.

“Good. The barrier’s been deactivated.”

David didn’t even glance at Hamel.

When the lord of the house died, the artificial veil that had filled the mansion was lifted.

Warm sunlight poured in through the windows.

The illusory barrier’s magic had been undone.

Holding the key he had taken from the head of the house, David went to the bookshelf full of books.

“Where was it… Ah, this will do.”

Looking as if he was thinking for a moment, he pulled away the carpet laid in front of the bookshelf.

Then he saw red-stained marks under the bookshelf.

“Right. It was here. If only I’d finished it properly back then, all this trouble… Ah, here it is.”

David muttered to himself, found a book, and pushed it into the shelf.

With a rumbling sound, the bookshelf slid away.

A hidden space behind it was revealed.

‘Stairs leading down to the basement….’

Watching this, Hamel suddenly felt the pieces of the puzzle click into place.

‘That’s it.’

That was the reason his father turned the mansion into a brutal workshop,
something he had fought desperately to keep from David, even if it meant becoming a monster himself.

What he had tried to protect was inside there.

David had targeted what lay beneath those stairs from the beginning and had hurt his father for it.

But something went wrong with his plan, and when it became hard to obtain what he wanted, he succeeded in drawing Hamel in to reach this place.

“…No.”

Because of him.

More than the pain of his burning entrails.

More than the pain of being stabbed by a sword.

The guilt that it was his fault drove him mad.

Hamel crawled with his dying body, but the distance did not close at all.

His heart beat more slowly and his eyelids grew heavy.

Then, at that moment.

A small prayer began to be heard behind Hamel.

---

“…You who have come to this land. Come. Blind as you are, you see farther than anyone. You who have been stabbed to death tens of thousands of times. You who wear the eternal fire upon your body.”

“Hm?”

A small but clear prayer could be heard.

David, descending the stairs, turned his head to look back.

There was a boy there, hands clasped in prayer.

“Ah~ Now that I think about it, that brat’s here too?”

David snorted with a laugh.

A clear sneer.

He wasn’t treating a mere deacon as any real threat.

A deacon, pale with fear and panic.

He probably had been dazed until now and had only just come to his senses.

“What to do about that.”

He had no qualms about killing him, but he hesitated for a moment whether it was worth wasting time on such a thing.

“?”

Light burst forth.

A fierce golden light burned away all malice and demonic energy.

He hadn’t seen it, but he had heard of it.

An exorcism ritual said to be usable only by bishops and above, a power to destroy the great evils of this world.

Solemn Exorcism.

David felt the demonic energy that had been lodged in his body evaporate in an instant.

“How could a child like that….”

David, greatly surprised, ran up the stairs.

He couldn’t leave it be.

Such Divine power would be enough to throw his plans into disarray.

Antonio trembled increasingly as David approached, but he did not back down.

He simply continued to recite his prayer.

‘That was dangerous.’

David was genuinely relieved.

It was the first time since entering the barrier that he had felt true danger.

But sadly, the gods seemed to be on his side.

“Seems that’s all you know how to do.”

─Twitch

Antonio’s shoulders hunched up tightly.

Antonio was still only a deacon, and what interested him was solely exorcism.

Therefore, unlike other Exorcist priests, he didn’t know how to use the holy spells to deal with humans.

David saw through that fact at a glance.

“…Step back. The gods are watching all of your wicked deeds.”

“Really? Wicked deeds, huh. How could the gods be watching my wicked deeds?”

“They are watching you through my eyes right now.”

“Hoho. Well now….”

He tilted his chin and stared at Antonio for a moment.

“How displeasing.”

David murmured low and swung his staff with a flick.

─Tear

“Huh?”

A tearing sound was heard at Antonio’s ears.

“Ugh… ah.”

Antonio gaped and groped at his two eye sockets with his hands.

Where his pupils should have been was empty, and something sticky dripped out from there.

His eyes had been gouged out.

Only when he realized that did the agonizing pain hit him.

“Aaaaaah!”

Would it feel like this if someone stabbed your eyes with an awl?

The nerves inside, dug out and roughly torn away, hurt unbearably.

Saliva drooled from his mouth and his trousers were damp, but Antonio himself didn’t notice at all.

He only lay on the floor in a pitiful state, writhing and convulsing.

David looked down at him and twisted the corner of his mouth.

“So now the gods cannot see me, then?”

He raised his staff as if he had no intention of wasting any more time.

─Step

Then a presence was heard from behind.

David was puzzled.

He thought there would be no one left who could be standing here now.

But if someone had stood up… he had a guess as to who it could be.

“You… you’re really persistent. My little brother.”

“….”

Hamel.

His brother, and

An Exorcist priest known as a priest of Azure Flame stood there intact.

Silent, staring at him with cold, cooled eyes.

“How can you be standing?”

David couldn’t understand the current situation.

Dragon’s blood is not something one could endure with mere willpower.

If you don’t know how to manipulate demonic energy, you can’t avoid death.

For an ordinary human, it was a lethal poison that would melt the entrails and make you bleed to death within moments.

‘Wait.’

A plausible hypothesis suddenly flashed through David’s mind.

‘Could that Solemn Exorcism just now have…?’

Come to think of it, even the demonic energy lingering in his body had seemed to be washed away.

“….”

Hamel gave no answer.

He only stared quietly at David.

For a moment, he felt an inexplicable strangeness.

Something was different.

After pondering briefly, David recognized the source of the unease.

‘Right, the eyes.’

The eyes.

The blue was the same, but the pupils were vertically slit like those of a reptile.

As he watched those eyes for a moment.

David recoiled with an indescribable chill.

That instinctive judgment saved him.

─Crack

A sword slammed into the spot where he had just been standing.

He hadn’t even seen the motion of the sword being thrown.

Hamel’s posture hadn’t changed either.

Only the sword in his hand had plunged down in front of David.

“What… this is impossible….”

He still could move at that speed.

Impossible.

David sensed that something was going wrong.

He hurriedly pulled out every card he had.

“Open, Graveyard.”

At that incantation, a shadow that had appeared behind David gaped like a mouth and spat something out.

─Spit

What the shadow spat out were three corpses of knights.

“Illusion craft. Marionette.”

When the threads of shadow extending from David’s fingertips connected, the knight corpses began to move.

Blue mana gathered on their drawn swords.

Three high-ranking knights, no less.

And with David’s marionette magic added, their power was beyond question.

With that level of force, a group of Exorcist priests could come and it wouldn’t matter.

‘Never mind someone who’s swallowed poison and is dying….’

As his thoughts reached that point, David barely calmed himself and steadied his breathing.

He wondered why he had been so flustered.

Hamel still looked at him without the slightest movement.

Maybe he had truly weakened.

“You’re overdoing it. I’ll put you out of your misery.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than David’s knight corpses charged.

In the blink of an eye, the knights reached Hamel, surrounding him from three directions and slashing.

And the next moment.

─Whoosh

The knights’ swords sliced through the air.

“…?”

David blinked, unable to understand what had happened.

Hamel had suddenly vanished.

As if by magic.

“Where to…!”

David’s pupils dilated wide as he looked around.

The vanished Hamel was on the ceiling.

He had jammed his fingers into the granite ceiling as if pinning tofu and fixed himself there.

─Tear

Then Hamel tore off a piece of the granite ceiling and hurled it down.

“…Is this a dream?”

David couldn’t believe what was happening before his eyes.

But he had no choice but to believe it.

─Bang!

One of the knights Hamel had thrown was crushed like an insect and died.

The jolt of pain from the severed connection convinced David that this was not a dream.

He had to run.

That was not his brother.

It was something in the shape of his brother.

“Stop that thing!”

David quickly made a decision and turned his body.

Following his command, two knights stood between Hamel and himself.

And the next moment.

─Snap

One knight’s head twisted like a twisted pastry.

As the knight fell, Hamel lightly swung his hand as if flicking away a fly.

David, his mind gone blank, ran to the window.

He intended to jump out.

But before he could even reach the window.

─Crack

Something flew beside the window and smashed into the wall.

It was the head of the last knight David had been controlling.

Five seconds.

It took merely five seconds.

The time it took for his proud undead knights to become nothing more than lumps of meat.

─Footsteps

That thing shaped like his brother slowly approached David from behind.

David’s body stiffened.

“….”

A steady breathing sound came from behind.

So calm it sounded like someone who had just woken from sleep.

Trembling, David turned his head and saw piercingly blue pupils.

Those stolid, open eyes seemed to say this.

Is that all you’ve got?

“Ah. Damn it….”

Only then did David realize.

That he had been in that thing’s grip for a long time already.