The Demon Wearing a Human Mask
A few hours after that horrific tragedy, deep inside the cave. Two battered figures hurried along as fast as their injuries would allow. Their ragged clothes and countless wounds made them look like soldiers fleeing a battlefield. They were the old man and the woman who had served as the party’s tank and mage.
“Whew… I reckon we can catch our breath here. You rest a spell too, miss. We don’t know when we’ll have to move again.”
The old man glanced around before speaking. The woman collapsed where she stood. Her face was smeared with dirt from the frantic escape, and her clothes were stained with blood and grime, making her appear even more pitiful.
“Hic… sniff… What are we supposed to do now? I remember from the training… if you get stranded in a dungeon… the odds of getting out alive are… hic…”
Once safety was assured, the woman finally let the tears she had been holding back burst forth. She could feel it in her bones: with the party completely destroyed, their chances of escaping this place were slim. The old man, far more experienced, knew it too.
“…Even so, there’s still hope for the two of us. I’ll take the lead. If you just cover the rear, we can get through most dangers.”
He tried his best to comfort her, still trembling from the fear of death. As he said, the synergy between the party’s two highest-value members was considerable. That was the only reason they had survived that hellish ordeal. Without either one of them, they never would have shaken off the pursuing ant monsters.
Yet even after his reassurance, the woman’s face remained deathly pale. It wasn’t just fear—it looked more like she was hesitating to say something. The old man, who had been watching her closely, naturally grew suspicious.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and fidgeted dozens of times. Just as the old man’s patience was about to snap, she finally spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Actually… there’s something I have to tell you. I used my last bit of mana on that spell earlier. So for a while, I won’t be able to support—”
The woman couldn’t finish. The moment she looked up, she saw that expression on the old man’s face. His features were twisted like a demon’s, radiating primal terror. The cave’s gloom and the deep wrinkles carved into his skin only made it worse.
She doubted her own eyes. The face staring down at her was nothing like the kindly grandfather who had always told her to call him “Grandpa.”
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the expression vanished as quickly as a mirage. By the time she came to her senses, the old man had returned to his usual self.
“Aigoo… this is a right mess. Still, mana recovers on its own over time, doesn’t it? In that case, let’s rest here a little longer. I was already worried, watching how exhausted you looked while we were moving.”
“Ah… yes. Thank you for your consideration.”
She answered on reflex, even though something felt deeply wrong. She forced the unease away. It was pure instinct—an attempt to protect her own mind.
When the old man sat down nearby to rest, fatigue finally crashed over her. The extreme stress from facing death, combined with hours of nonstop running, had pushed her past her limit both mentally and physically. The moment her tension eased, drowsiness swept in like a tidal wave.
Of course, this was only possible because the old man was there, steadfastly guarding her. If anything happened, he would wake her. He would protect her. She had already come to rely on him for so much.
The more she relaxed, the heavier the sleep became. In the end, she couldn’t fight it off and drifted into unconsciousness.
At almost the same moment, the old man—who had been sitting quietly nearby—slowly rose to his feet. The warm expression he had worn while suggesting she rest was long gone. He looked down at the sleeping woman, his face contorted as he clicked his tongue. It was the same demonic face she had glimpsed earlier.
From the very beginning, he had saved her when she was left alone in that chaos and helped her escape. The reason was simple: keeping the mage with him increased their survival odds inside the dungeon. And it had worked—they had successfully shaken off the pursuit. But now that she could no longer use magic, everything changed.
After decades in this line of work, he knew better than anyone how slow a mage’s natural mana recovery was. Without potions or other artificial aids, full recovery would take at least three hours. The problem was that they couldn’t afford to stay in one place that long. Even if they had escaped the immediate chase, the monsters would find them soon enough. This was their home territory, after all. Staying put risked being surrounded in an instant.
Yet the woman couldn’t keep up with his pace either. Her current state made that obvious. No matter how close he stayed, falling asleep inside a dungeon was proof she had reached her limit. Without magic and with her stamina depleted, she was no longer an asset—she was dead weight.
Even after reaching that conclusion, the old man continued to deliberate. But it wasn’t out of sympathy. It was regret at having to discard something valuable. From the start, she had been nothing more than a useful tool to him.
He hadn’t always been this way. He had simply adapted to survive in this rotten world. That didn’t excuse what he was about to do.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch…
The sound of ants moving echoed from not far away. The old man, who had expected at least a few dozen minutes of safety, frowned. On top of everything else, nothing was going right today. It was truly the worst possible day.
He glanced toward the noise with tense eyes, then looked back down at the sleeping woman.
“It’s a real shame. But this must be your fate. Don’t go resenting me, now.”
After offering a meaningless apology the woman would never hear, the old man quickly grabbed his shield and left without a single moment of hesitation. He genuinely believed that dying painlessly in her sleep was a far kinder end than being abandoned while awake.
He moved away from her location as fast as he could. Once he was a safe distance away, he stopped to catch his breath. His decision had been correct. If he had kept dragging her along, his own speed would have dropped and their survival chances would have plummeted. It was better to search for the exit alone.
Having coldly erased her from his mind, the old man looked ahead—and immediately spotted it. A strange lifeform blocking the path just ahead. He instinctively raised his shield, but upon closer inspection, confusion crossed his face.
It was a grayish slime, clinging to the floor like a small puddle. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Why would a slime appear in this cave-type dungeon? They had only encountered ant monsters so far. He didn’t know why it was here, but that hardly mattered now.
Without much caution, he approached the path where the slime waited. To be precise, he saw no need for caution. Ordinary slimes had almost no intelligence and posed little threat to hunters. They usually hid traps to lure prey, so if one was openly showing itself, all he had to do was avoid it.
His reasoning was perfectly logical. Ironically, that was exactly why he should have been more careful. A slime that revealed itself openly instead of hiding traps had already broken common sense. He should have been wary. But with ant monsters lurking everywhere, his attention was elsewhere, and he overlooked the anomaly.
The price of that carelessness came back to him moments later like a sharp blade.
Smack.
“?!… What the—?!”
Just as he neared the slime, it suddenly leaped and latched onto the shield he was holding up. Startled—he had never expected it to move on its own—he frantically tried to shake it off, but the slime clung like glue. It grew larger and larger until it completely engulfed the massive shield.
If he had been thinking clearly, he would have abandoned the shield. But he couldn’t bring himself to let go. To a tank, a shield was an extension of the self—something he could never discard. That stubborn attachment sealed his fate.
By the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. The transparent gray slime had already spread past the shield and swallowed his entire arm. And it kept growing, as if determined to consume him whole.
The old man’s eyes trembled violently. What filled them was undeniable terror.