Cockroach
Cockroach
In the midst of the swiftly settled situation, while they were binding those who had surrendered, it was Teneasi who noticed the anomaly first.
But despite being dulled to changes by the blessing Teneasi had bestowed, Sheryl also sensed something was happening as a wave of revulsion surged through her, and she naturally shifted her gaze to Teneasi and opened her mouth.
"Saintess?"
"...We must regroup with Siegfried. He cannot sense the presence of a demon, so he won't be aware of this situation."
"Is it a demon?"
"Yes, that's correct. And it could be... extremely serious. Entiere! Go on ahead!"
"What? Just me? Why?"
"There's something I must explain to these people. We have no time to waste, so hurry!"
Looking at the faces of her companions, which hardened in an instant, Teneasi's mind began to race at an unprecedented speed. Teneasi, who had fallen into contemplation so deep she even forgot the noise Entiere made as she hurried away, tried desperately to determine whether the crushing pressure she felt was because she was close to the entity emitting this evil energy, or whether it was this intense despite the distance, but she ultimately failed.
Was it because she had expended too much power in the last battle? It had certainly been a difficult fight, but not to the point of exhausting her this much. Which meant the cause was purely the evil energy she was sensing... and as far as she knew, there were only two cases where her senses could be thrown into such disarray.
Either beings called Archdemons or archdukes had manifested, or someone was using the power of such a being to open a gate, and the energy of the otherworld was leaking through.
That was why Teneasi couldn't help but hesitate. If it was the latter, there was a chance to stop it. But if they ran into the former case, it was safe to assume they would simply die. The title of archduke wasn't given by humans, but by those vile demons themselves, and they bore it because they possessed power befitting it.
"There is a possibility it is an Archdemon. However, it could also be that they've opened a door to the otherworld with the help of a demon possessing that level of power."
"...So it's either something we can stop, or something we can't."
"Yes. I would prefer that all of you wait to regroup with Siegfried."
Giving them the choice was because she was an Imperial citizen. Her purpose was to offer help, not to force it. If they refused to retreat for the sake of regrouping, Teneasi had to respect that decision.
"I will go alone and conduct reconnaissance. Saintess, please take these people and regroup with the Hero."
Without a moment's hesitation, Sheryl gave an answer Teneasi had not anticipated. And before Teneasi could even retort, Sheryl began explaining the reasoning behind her judgment.
"The others cannot feel this presence. To track it, either myself or the Saintess is ultimately indispensable, and if we bring the Saintess along, she will inevitably require an escort. In that case, our mobility will be compromised, and there may be a situation where we cannot retreat urgently when we must. Fortunately, I hold the answer to all those problems."
It might have sounded deliberately arrogant, but it was all true. Even knowing there was an option to simply wait for another chance together, Teneasi couldn't bring herself to suggest it. As if noticing Teneasi's hesitation, Sheryl deliberately added more words.
"As the Young Head of House Ogatorf, sworn to protect the royal family, this is my duty."
Those words seemed as though they were spoken not to Teneasi, but to herself.
◈
"It feels like we're definitely moving fast, but somehow every lead's a dead end."
Even though Sheryl had prioritized searching the locations with the clearest traces after entering the waterway, the fact that we couldn't encounter the enemy was a real head-scratcher. But that didn't mean Sheryl's predictions were wrong. On the contrary, every place we went had signs of habitation or some kind of unidentified magic tools installed, enough to elicit genuine admiration and applause.
I'd been examining them diligently with Magic Sight and wrecking them all, but since they'd already been abandoned like this, the devices had likely already served their purpose, so it wasn't a very meaningful act. Even so, I ended up checking my assigned zone faster than scheduled, and I'd tried to do some half-assed deductive reasoning by searching arbitrary locations, but since the tracks themselves were already a dead end, I decided to give up.
"Damn, she's good. Is this what happens when you learn strategy and tactics on top of everything else?"
To whine about not beating me in swordsmanship while possessing this kind of knowledge was the mark of a truly greedy little brat. With no reason to linger any longer, I pulled the map from my pocket and checked the marked locations. I found that thanks to me briefly going off on a wild goose chase down a different path, we were now quite close to the zone Siegfried's party was supposed to investigate.
If we could meet them, there was no reason to go all the way back to the rendezvous point. Anyway, the fact that there was nothing on my side meant there was a high probability of something being on the others' side, so the sooner we regrouped, the better.
I marveled that, being the underground waterways beneath the kingdom's capital, we hadn't encountered a single common monster, and I hurried along. It was around the time I'd nearly reached the investigation point for Siegfried's party that my eyes began to catch sight of something peculiar.
"...Why is the Magic Power moving like that?"
It wasn't magic. The Magic Power was actually piercing through the waterway walls and moving rapidly in a specific direction, and that direction wasn't where Siegfried was expected to be, nor was there any mage with the ability to move that much Magic Power.
If this had been on the surface, I would've smashed through the walls immediately and opened a straight passage to go investigate, but being underground, doing that wouldn't have created a path anyway. So for now, I moved forward, slicing through the larger streams of Magic Power I could see with my sword. Honestly, I didn't know how much help that would be against this volume of Magic Power, but it felt better than doing nothing and just letting it be.
But even as I moved like that, the oddities didn't stop. I couldn't find Siegfried's party.
"Was there a battle up ahead?"
If they had passed through without incident, it wouldn't have taken them this long, so thinking Siegfried's party might have drawn the lucky straw, I moved a bit faster.
"U-uh, Teaching Assistant Ega?!"
"Why is the teaching assistant coming from that direction...?"
As I rushed ahead and ended up sprinting in a straight line all the way to the intermediate rendezvous point, what I found was Siegfried's party, minus Siegfried.
"Things just turned out that way. Princess Eselua? Did you find something?"
I gave a suitable answer, but the atmosphere was unusual. Even setting aside the few captured rebels, Sheryl, the Saintess, and Siegfried were nowhere to be seen. Before I could even wonder what their absence implied, Eselua hastily explained.
"A problem arose at the point Sir Sheryl headed for. She went out alone to reconnoiter and sent the rest of her party here, so Siegfried took only Teneasi and urgently followed after her."
"A problem?"
"It's said the demon worshippers might be trying to manifest an Archdemon."
"Those bastards... Hmph. What kind of sacrifices do they have to pull off summoning not just a demon, but an Archdemon?"
If they were simply pulling it on credit, then since we struck first, they'd be the ones in a hurry. And if they couldn't pull it on credit, then the bastards probably hadn't even managed a proper summon yet. Even if those streams of Magic Power I'd been constantly slicing through earlier were the aftermath of such a summoning ritual, compared to Inguladius, it was nothing, a mere drop in the bucket, so it wasn't that threatening.
But the words Eselua forced out while biting her lip went far beyond my complacent predictions.
"They might not have come to the capital simply to flee. Teneasi said... based on the battle fought at the Holy Light Cross Order's main headquarters, there's a possibility the demon worshippers had already largely finished preparing the sacrifices."
For a moment, a curse nearly burst from my lips, only held back by herculean patience.
Right, even so, there was no way the Holy Light Cross Order and the Hero's party were such morons that they wouldn't have foreseen this situation even while seeing corpses drained of every drop of blood scattered everywhere. If they hadn't sensed any such signs, of course they wouldn't have predicted it, right?
"...The demon I encountered manifested through blood as a medium. It seems the demons the Hero faced were different."
If they really had just failed to predict it, they would've had to taste my unpredictable fury as well, but fortunately for them, no such calamity occurred.
"That's right. The thing we were most wary of was sacrificial transformation through death, but I have no idea what method they used..."
Good. Then what I had to do was simple.
"Princess Eselua, please lead these people up and inform the academy. I will follow the Hero."
"But tracking them won't be easy..."
"I have my own methods."
Of course, even if they'd obviously left tracks while moving urgently, finding people who'd moved along an unexpected path over a stone floor was a difficult task.
But right now, the flow of Magic Power visible to my eyes was so vivid that it wasn't a problem at all.
"Th-then, we should come with you..."
"I understand you're worried, but you'd slow me down. Especially if I ended up having to retreat."
She looked terribly worried about Siegfried, but I too was flustered by the unexpected situation, so I cut her off sharply and dashed off, following the visible Magic Power.
Didn't they say curiosity killed the cat?
Fortunately, Longcat Sheryl wouldn't die from something like curiosity, but she was a creature very likely to die for noblesse oblige, so I hurried as fast as I could.