Chapter 29

“My name is Hamel Saint Gilmore. I am an Exorcist priest.”

No sooner had Hamel finished speaking than Dain’s eyes widened.

There were many reasons to be surprised.

An Exorcist priest.

A priest who even bore the Saint as a middle name.

A being whispered about, said to number only about ten across the continent.

And above all.

“Silver hair, blue eyes, and… Gilmore. You are…“

Dain, the family’s knight and standard-bearer, recognized who stood before him.

“Young master… it’s you.”

He had heard the tale of tragedy that had befallen the family.

That the mistress had been slain by a monster and the lord of the house had gone mad.

He had not been present during that time, roaming battlefields, but he had seen the young master’s face in childhood.

That distinctive appearance was not easy to forget.

‘I heard he left for the order, though…’

Dain reflexively bowed when he saw the man he’d long served.

The villagers awkwardly lowered themselves too.

But in their eyes there was also fear and resentment.

Quite some time had passed since the Gilmore family began its decline.

The head of the house had shut himself away in the mansion, and management of the estate’s chief income, the salt business, was in ruins.

With no income, knights and guards left the domain long ago, and it was only natural that law and order had collapsed.

It was not without reason that forceful Dain had been acting as the village head.

Rumors had even been spreading that someone had recently gone missing from the mansion.

“…Now, the young master shows up and what now.”

A grumble of discontent echoed low through the tunnel.

In Haidern, the name Gilmore had already become one of curses.

“Who are you?”

Daniel placed his hand on the hilt in response to their reaction.

This was Hamel, who would soon be the lord of the domain.

If he let such insults pass, his authority would be undermined.

At his sharp reaction, everyone fell silent as if they’d been struck dumb.

Then Hamel stepped forward to stop Daniel.

“That’s enough. It’s understandable they have grievances.”

“Hamel. You can’t let this go.”

Daniel said firmly.

But Hamel did not back down and replied.

“I have not come here as a member of the family. I have come only to fulfill my duty.”

It was also a statement to the other villagers.

He was not yet the lord.

Their complaints about the domain could be dealt with later.

Now was the time to solve the problem here.

Hamel looked at Aaron and his trembling family before him.

“Are you afraid?”

Hamel met Aaron’s gaze and spoke.

“…Pl-please spare us. My family and I are truly ordinary people.”

“Do not worry.”

Hamel said calmly.

His composed manner made Dain and the miners think he might show mercy, and they were taken aback.

But the meaning hidden in Hamel’s words was far from warm.

“If you are not a demon, you need not fear me.”

Hamel drew his sword and cut his own hand.

When his palm filled with blood, he splashed it toward Aaron and his family.

“W-what is—!”

Aaron, suddenly doused in blood, cried out in confusion.

Hamel did not answer.

He simply continued with what he had to say.

“But if you are a demon.”

Hamel’s eyes had grown unbearably cold.

“You should rightly fear me.”

Hamel murmured low and immediately began to pray.

─Hwareuk

A blue flame blossomed.

The sight was so beautiful that the people were momentarily mesmerized by the flames.

A fire that heals people with warmth.

But at the same time it was a fierce, ravenous fire that consumed demons.

“U—aaaaah!”

Aaron’s whole family was engulfed in flames in an instant.

Only then did Dain come to his senses and mutter.

“What… what is happening all of a sudden…?”

“This flame is called the Azure Flame.”

Hamel reached toward the roaring blue fire.

For a moment everyone was horrified by the sight.

Hamel’s hand, plunged into the flames, remained perfectly fine.

Indeed, the cut on his hand healed as if by itself.

“It is a flame that heals human wounds and burns demons by natural law.”

In the blaze, Aaron writhed in pain as he burned.

For a brief moment his face melted and shifted into the forms of dozens of people.

“Th—this… so… meaningless…”

Then finally it transformed into the face of a child.

It was clearly the first, the origin of everything.

“…It’s me.”

It was unmistakably Dain as a child.

Dain watched and his expression hardened.

With that image, the creature posing as Aaron stopped moving.

Only the charred shape remained, and blue will-o’-the-wisps flickered around it.

Only then did Dain realize his childhood wrong had finally been resolved.

“As Mr. Dain suspected, Aaron and his wife were demons.”

Hamel strode into the blue flames.

Charred human figures.

But among them was a person not a single scratch on him.

“…Den?”

Dain stared blankly at Aaron’s child.

Den lay unconscious with eyes closed as if passed out.

That child alone remained unscathed, not even a hair burned in the fierce flames.

“Fortunately, the child was human.”

Hamel carefully scooped the child up into his arms.

Seeing that, Dain sank to his knees.

“I… I… could it be… now…?”

He had nearly killed an innocent child who knew nothing.

In that instant, Dain remembered the words of the creature that had mimicked Aaron.

‘…Dain… at least spare my child. If you kill that child you’ll truly regret it.’

Realizing the meaning of those words, Dain’s face went white.

Hamel walked over and gently handed Den to him.

“These are demons.”

Beings that trick humans with bizarre methods and drive them into pits of despair.

That was what demons were, as Hamel knew them.

He shuddered at how close Dain had come to being deceived until the last moment.

He recalled a memory he had forgotten.

“Hah… but young master, there are three doppelgängers in total. There should still be another monster…“

“Ah, don’t worry about that.”

Hamel calmly stood up.

Then he turned and spoke to the villagers.

“From now on, please pass through the flames one by one.”

“……”

“Go on.”

Daniel stood guarding the tunnel entrance.

One person closed their eyes and stepped through the fire, and then others followed, hesitantly, toward the flames.

Thus everyone passed through the fire, and only one person remained on the other side.

“So it was you.”

Hamel pointed his sword at him.

The man murmured with a vacant expression.

“So this is how it turns out.”

Tom.

The miner who had most vehemently defended Aaron’s family.

Tom looked at Hamel with an empty expression.

“…Tom was a demon?”

“……”

The miners and Dain were all speechless.

Hamel, leaving them behind, answered in a cold voice.

“How long did you think you could keep hiding and continue doing this?”

“No.”

Tom — no, the last remaining doppelgänger — slowly shook his head.

“If we could take just a few more, we wouldn’t have needed to hide anymore.”

“…?”

“I’m sorry. This was the best I could do.”

As the doppelgänger muttered that,

he plunged the dagger he held into his own throat.

Taken aback by the unexpected act, Hamel merely frowned and could not intervene.

“Ss—splurt… ugh.”

With a hissing sound, a fountain of blood gushed up.

The doppelgänger collapsed forward and died.

“……”

An ominous silence filled the tunnel.

─Flicker

The lamp’s flame trembled and flickered.

Deep within the tunnel.

From that abyss-like, thick darkness came an unidentifiable sound.

It sounded like an animal’s cry at times.

And at times like the sound of wind and rain.

What it was could not be determined, but one thing was certain.

“From now on, you must obey my instructions.”

“……?”

“Get out of here immediately.”

That was not a being to be taken lightly.

“What on earth had been sleeping in this mine?”

“Who knows.”

Even at Daniel’s question, Hamel slowly shook his head.

The legends about the forbidden area of the mine were uniformly bizarre and terrifying, but their origin and true nature were unknown.

A monster with a thousand teeth that devours children.

Hundreds of eyes that pursue you no matter how far you run.

Shadows that consume light.

There were only rumors, and Hamel had never once considered that any of it could be true.

But if it were true, then it was no ordinary being.

‘Perhaps… it could be the mastermind behind what happened to the family.’

The forbidden area long spoken of in the Gilmore family’s domain.

If it was its master, there might well be ties to the family.

Hamel clenched the hand that held his sword.

─Flicker flicker

It was then.

The lamp’s weak light finally snapped off.

Hamel immediately used the blood he’d splashed earlier to ignite the Azure Flame.

The blue flame pushed back the darkness and lit the tunnel.

“It’s coming.”

Hamel murmured under his breath.

A stone scraped roughly, sounding like a snake crawling.

At the clattering sound of scales, Hamel tensed.

A snake is the most primal symbol of demon.

Among snake-shaped demons, few are to be underestimated.

Then.

Something shimmered and revealed itself from within the tunnel.

─Hop

“…?”

A moment of silence passed.

Then Daniel murmured blankly.

“…Hamel. What is that?”

“…It appears to be a rabbit.”

Hamel replied, frowning.

What had emerged in the tunnel was none other than a gray-brown rabbit.

The rabbit blinked its beady eyes alternately at Daniel and Hamel.

They had never seen or heard of a demon that looked like that.

‘I clearly heard something crawling.’

Why had a rabbit popped out of the tunnel?

Puzzled, Hamel approached the rabbit.

No, it was the moment he was about to step closer.

─Wobble

His balance gave out and Hamel fell face-first to the ground.

What had happened?

Hamel looked at his leg, which had suddenly gone numb.

─Gasp

Beneath the missing ankle he saw a bleeding stump.

At the same time a dizzying pain made his vision go white.

“Hamel!”

Daniel, realizing what had happened, shouted urgently.

‘We’ve been hit.’

When?

No, how?

Hamel reflexively prayed and scanned his surroundings.

As he staunched the bleeding, the wound began to repair itself.

─Rattle

Once again the sound of scales rattled by his ears.

Hamel realized the sound was coming from all around him.

Shadows flickered.

It was not the flame swaying in the wind.

Shadows along the tunnel wall slid and tore into the corpse of the dead doppelgänger, crunching it bone and all.

The shadow took the shape of a snake with sharp teeth.

“Be careful!”

Hamel quickly hurled his sword to Daniel’s feet.

The shadow that had been sliding toward Daniel hissed like a snake and veered away.

Daniel hurriedly moved beside Hamel, away from the shadow, and thanked him.

“…You saved me. But what kind of monster is that?”

“…I don’t know why it appears in that form, but as far as I know there’s only one being that takes such shapes.”

It had backed off as if regretting letting Daniel escape.

It chewed and swallowed the dead doppelgänger as if drawing it into shadow.

Finally it bit off Hamel’s ankle, and then another head rose upright against the back wall behind the rabbit.

A serpent shadow with three heads.

A being with thousands of thorn-like teeth and hundreds of eyes.

A snake that swallows death.

A super-class demon.

Zahhak.