Cockroach
Cockroach
The spirit reacted faster than Siegfried to the monsters' sudden appearance.
More wind blades than usual whipped up hard enough to make Siegfried's body briefly lift off the ground, slamming into the monsters that had opened their maws and bared their teeth. But it was a precarious situation where, had Siegfried not reacted to the intense sounds of slicing, the screams, and the blood by quickly battering the monsters with the flat of his blade and pulling back, he would have been crushed under the corpses. Amid it all, only Krumelia smiled as if delighted by the cascading wave of monsters.
[Fear! And flee! The more you do, the more the beings of Manmajeon shall defile this land! You wretches will die in agony and despair...]
"Flames upon that fucking lunatic!"
Along with Siegfried's shout cutting off Krumelia's words, his greatsword blazed and a massive pillar of fire erupted.
Having watched the sparring with Eldmia, Sheryl knew it was auxiliary magic called a battery. She couldn't be entirely sure whether a shout laced with that sort of profanity really counted as an incantation, but right now the spell's result mattered far more than that.
The moment the surging flames fell to the ground like thick oil, they began searing through the monsters with terrifying force—so its performance was undeniably solid. Though it didn't seem enough to threaten Krumelia, it at least halted the pouring monsters from charging forward immediately.
"Your name was Sheryl, right?! Fall back with Teneasi! Holding off a swarm while protecting you too is still too much!"
Siegfried's shout was truly worthy of a Hero, but Sheryl disagreed with that judgment. Most of the quadrupedal monsters that had evaded the flames still targeted Siegfried, but a handful of them were charging straight at her and Teneasi.
Fortunately, their movements were straightforward, so handling about four at once wasn't difficult. They even died when cut. Convinced these were far more manageable foes than demons, Sheryl shouted back.
"Those monsters aren't targeting only you, Hero! Fall back for now! We need to hold the passage!"
"What... okay! Moving!"
Siegfried, who had turned his head to argue while jamming his greatsword into the maw of a monster lunging to bite his head off, saw the monster corpses lying around Sheryl and immediately spun his body around. If they were only after him, it would have been better to commit indiscriminate slaughter in a wide-open space, but if that wasn't the case, holding the passage and waiting for reinforcements was the right call.
"Dammit, if only Eselua and Entiere were here, I'd split that fucking bitch's skull from the crown down!"
The dead monsters didn't vanish, and while the monsters spilling from Krumelia's stomach weren't erupting as explosively as at first, they continued steadily emerging. Worse, they seemed to possess at least beast-level intelligence and charged without regard for their own bodies, making it impossible to freely go on the offensive. One wrong move and he might go down in history as the first Hero to be crushed to death under monster corpses.
"How long until Eldmia catches on and gets here?"
"No idea. If he was lucky enough to run into Her Highness's party, he'd hurry, but... this isn't a location marked on the map."
Sheryl herself had merely followed that foul energy, and even Siegfried had reached this corridor using Saintess Teneasi as a compass. No matter how skilled Eldmia was at tracking, finding human traces on a stone floor was no easy task—skepticism was the only reasonable stance.
[Ha! As if you've got time to act relaxed!]
Watching them guard the passage and shift to a defensive posture, Krumelia burst into naked laughter, raised both arms, and began chanting. Siegfried had studied magic diligently, but this was a language he'd never heard before, so he had no trouble recognizing it as the tongue used exclusively by demons.
And when he saw Krumelia's two arms melt together and merge into one, a new rift tearing open from the fused mass, his brow furrowed.
"Th-that fucking bitch. She's trying to open another gate, isn't she?"
"Oh Ete..."
Unlike the two who were grimacing in tension, Sheryl found herself tilting her head despite the dire situation. Open a gate? Then the same thing as before would...
[Aaaaaagh?!]
...happen.
Krumelia let out a scream so agonized that even the summoned monsters turned their heads to stare at her, and she began thrashing violently once again like a fish out of water.
[Fuck! Fuuuck!]
"...The hell? What's wrong with that bitch?"
"I don't know either. But she acted the same way earlier when she did that nonsense to her own stomach..."
[You worthless dogshit Hero basaaaard!! What the hell did you dooooaagh!!]
Once again streaming dark red blood like tears and writhing on the floor, Krumelia was stared at by Siegfried, who wore a briefly dazed expression before his eyes blazed with fury and he spoke.
"Fuck? I didn't do a goddamn thing and now I'm catching false accusations out of nowhere?"
Watching a demon suffer didn't exactly upset him, but being wrongly accused was being wrongly accused. Of course, thanks to the screams Krumelia was belting out herself, none of Siegfried's protests reached her ears.
The severity of the pain was impossible to gauge, but Krumelia, who had been convulsing, suddenly bolted upright, fixed Siegfried with a gaze filled with pure hatred, and shrieked.
[Geuhk! Gueok! Guh, uaaaaaagh! I'll kill you! I don't know what the hell you did, but I'll tear you apart alive...]
-Fweet!
At that moment, something shot through the gap between Siegfried and Sheryl, embedded itself dead center between Krumelia's eyebrows, and punched a clean hole straight through.
[...Ghk?]
"A worthless piece of shit worse than a cockroach you can't even use for fertilizer, and it's disgustingly loud on top of that. The world's running nice and smooth, really."
When everyone spun around in shock, there stood Eldmia, glaring at the demon with a gaze overflowing with the deepest contempt. Seeing that face, Siegfried could newly confirm that although Eldmia always grumbled at him, it had all been in jest, and Sheryl, who had known him for two years, flinched slightly at a side of him she'd never seen before.
"How the hell did you find us this fast?"
It had been a fairly serious situation, but given that he could react like that the moment he saw them, Siegfried was thinking that a Hero really was a Hero after all. Meanwhile, Eldmia's expression quickly softened before he even answered Siegfried—he approached Sheryl and began checking her over from head to toe.
"Are you hurt?"
Sheryl, whose lips almost twitched upward at that reaction, forced herself to nod calmly and answered with confidence.
"I'm not hurt. But I nearly ended up in trouble because I had no weapon that could deal with the demon."
"Tch, I see. I'll have to have a word with Mr. Balkun later."
"She flailed some disgusting tentacle-like things from her fingers, but it was nothing."
"Revolting bitch. Still, if she was swinging as many as she had fingers, that would've been threatening—you dodged well."
Patting her shoulder as if to say "well done," Eldmia stepped forward, and his expression shifted back to that of a man beholding something uniquely repulsive in all the world.
"Little brother? I think our party really might need a scout."
"...Promise me one thing, and I'll consider it."
"What?! What is it?!"
"Keep your mouth shut about what you're about to see. That includes the Saintess."
"...? Fine!"
Without even turning around, Eldmia whistled, and the needle that had bored a hole through Krumelia's forehead flew back to his side. Watching this, Siegfried figured that what Eldmia wanted him to keep quiet about was the true capability of those needles, and that he was planning to wipe out the mass of monsters in one sweep—he looked on with expectant eyes.
But for some reason, Eldmia merely fiddled with his sword, still sheathed. Gazing beyond the flames and the horde of monsters at Krumelia, Eldmia asked a different question.
"Is that one not just a demon, but possessed or something?"
"Huh? How did you know?"
"She looks human. The one I ran into had a face like a bat whose skin had been stretched."
Even as he spoke indifferently, Eldmia didn't take his eyes off Krumelia, who was still writhing.
"Don't know what trick she's pulled, but monsters keep pouring out of her stomach."
"W-we're guessing it's some kind of gate. Just a moment ago, she tried to open yet another gate through her own two arms."
"So that's why she kept flying around being a nuisance."
"Pardon?"
"No, just talking to myself. Stay put here for now."
As Eldmia, who had muttered something incomprehensible, took one step forward, Krumelia's upper body, which had collapsed backward, suddenly snapped upright again, and this time her gaze shifted to Eldmia. The rate of monsters emerging from her stomach had dwindled to maybe one every several dozen seconds, but the monsters already surrounding her were more than threatening enough on their own. And there she stood amid the writhing swarm, a hole bored through her skull, streaming bloody tears—not a pretty sight.
At the grotesque sight, the party frowned but held their positions as Eldmia had instructed. He was a man who had beaten even the Hero, so none of them seriously thought he would suddenly die; they had little reason to resist following his directions.
[You... what... are you?!]
The unexpected ambush hadn't been fatal, but it was more than enough to push her displeasure, already at a boiling point, clear over the edge. Krumelia resolved to tear him apart alive without fail while simultaneously opening her eyes wide so she would not forget the face of the human she was going to rip to pieces.
And absurdly, she flinched.
It was the kind of gaze a human being was never met with when confronting another, a stare that made the target feel less than human—something else entirely. Thanks to that, despite the monsters and the wall of flame standing between her and him, Krumelia tensed up, feeling as if he might lunge forward at any moment and cleave her host's neck clean off.
"...Hey, is the original owner of that body dead?"
There was no fear, no anger in that gaze—only the look of someone beholding something loathsome, grotesque, and utterly insignificant. It was so unbearably grating that Krumelia spat back venomously.
[...Ha. Were you acquainted or something? You think he'd still be alive with his body in this state?]
"What a waste. There was something I wanted to ask."
[You're all going to die anyway, so why not ask beside that god you lot love so much?]
And with that, she activated the gate she had finished during all the stalling.
Unlike the mindless monsters of Manmajeon she'd been dragging over through her own ability, this gate would summon genuine demons. Mocking the humans who stood there with no idea what the gate's completion meant, Krumelia was certain of victory.
The demons contracted to her numbered five. They weren't just any rabble—they were powerful enough to pose a threat even to a Hero. Though she had consumed a significant portion of the main body's power in Manmajeon for this plan, that hardly mattered—she could simply recover it by laying waste to the kingdom afterward.
That was why Krumelia could feel the demons crossing over through the gate unfurling from her clasped hands and cry out.
[Say hello to the demons who want to play with you lot...]
"Cockroaches."
Completely ignoring her confident response and the gate beginning to expand, Eldmia, who had merely been staring at her while fiddling with his sword, opened his mouth, and a voice so quiet it barely reached them over the growling of the monsters slipped out.
"When you see one, you're supposed to expect dozens more."
What the hell is this human talking about?
The moment question marks filled Krumelia's certainty-flooded face, five demons simultaneously revealed themselves through the expanded gate. At the sight of Eldmia still calmly watching before belatedly reaching to draw his sword, Krumelia burst into mocking laughter.
[Ridiculous...]
"So when you spray pesticide, you spray carefully. Rush it and you won't kill them all."
And then, in a surreal spectacle where blood suddenly burst out from every direction and the heads of not only the monsters but the demons who had just emerged fell clean off without exception, she froze completely.
[...Huh?]
While Krumelia stood bewildered, Eldmia had already pierced through even the wall of flame, closing the distance in an instant, and swung his sword straight at her neck.