The Demon of the Wasteland
Contrary to the wishes of the human, the elf, and the half-troll, Agnes approached them with a smile, raising her glass.
"Let's have a drink together. My treat."
"I-I'm fine, really."
"No need to be polite. Or is it that you don't want to share a drink with someone whose job is dragging people in for interrogation?"
He had only intended to keep an eye on her from a distance, but Yohan suddenly found himself sharing a table with Agnes. Still, it wasn't entirely a bad thing. At the very least, sitting right across from her meant he could monitor her intake and stop the Inquisitor from getting completely hammered.
And so, a bizarre spectacle unfolded: an Inquisitor of the Central Church, a human and an elf who were former grave robbers, and a half-troll all sitting together at a single table.
Fortunately, rumors of Agnes's true identity had already spread throughout the village, so no one dared to pick a fight with them.
"Hey! Three more of whatever she's having!"
Well, what could he do? He might as well stuff his stomach with free booze and food! Having made up his mind, Yohan raised his hand and ordered.
"Here you go, three house brews."
Before long, the tavern keeper personally brought over their drinks.
"Ah..."
—If only there weren't so many eyes watching, I would love a drink too.
Yohan let out an involuntary sigh of admiration as he stared at the golden liquid filling the large wooden mug. Meanwhile, the Goddess pouted and grumbled in his mind.
As expected, fantasy beer tastes best when served in a massive wooden mug that looks like a miniature oak barrel. Yohan nodded in deep agreement with his own thoughts.
"Drink up, it's beer time."
Even if I'm not the one paying for it, Yohan added silently before bringing the mug to his lips.
"But do you think this is really a house brew?"
While Yohan and Falco tipped their mugs, Billy hesitated, staring at the beer in front of him without taking a sip.
"Of course it is. How many merchants do you think actually travel all the way to a backwater place like this just to sell imported booze?"
"I-I suppose that's true."
In truth, calling it a "house brew" didn't mean it was anything special. In terms of quality, it was several leagues below the cheap alcohol distributed in the Balifield Undercity.
"So, we shouldn't have any more business together. Why did you come looking for me?"
Agnes asked, having already emptied half her mug in the blink of an eye.
"The Sheriff asked me to keep an eye on you so you don't get wasted and cause trouble."
Deciding it was pointless to lie since she had already caught on, Yohan exchanged a glance with Falco before speaking frankly.
"Ha! Keeping an eye on an Inquisitor?"
"Yeah. Seriously."
An Inquisitor was always the one doing the watching and the interrogating. Yohan's blunt answer completely shattered that conventional dynamic.
"Pfft—!"
Agnes couldn't hold back her laughter.
"That Sheriff doesn't seem like the type to bow his head to anyone even with a blade at his throat, but I didn't expect you to be so blunt about it either."
Yohan had spoken with a devil-may-care attitude, but his honesty seemed to strike a chord with Agnes.
"Well, it's not like it's a hard job. We're all struggling out here, so we might as well help each other out, right?"
Yohan said, taking another swig of his beer.
"Not bad."
"What isn't?"
Yohan asked at Agnes's murmur. Agnes let out a bittersweet smile, then crossed her arms and looked down.
"An Inquisitor is a position that is feared and avoided by everyone, whether they are believers or non-believers."
"Is that so?"
"Our primary duty is to travel across the continent to root out heresy, but at the same time, we are also tasked with weeding out dissidents within the Central Church itself."
"Makes sense."
Internal auditors of any organization were bound to be despised by other departments. Who would welcome someone poking around their backyard? Especially those with something to hide. Understanding this reality, Yohan nodded.
By nature, an Inquisitor's mission was almost always a solo endeavor. A gathering of multiple Inquisitors in one place usually meant a demon or a heretical cult had been discovered, which was never a good sign. To ordinary citizens or local guards, they were the last people they ever wanted to see.
"An Inquisitor is always shunned, and our missions are always tedious or dangerous. In that sense, meeting a local like you during a mission is one of the few pleasures of the job."
Though she spoke in a roundabout way, Agnes was genuinely grateful that Yohan treated her without any pretense or fear.
—She is just like you, unable to offer a straightforward thank you.
The Goddess's snide voice echoed in his mind, but Yohan casually ignored her.
"Yohan has always been like that."
Falco, who had been quietly sipping her beer, chimed in. Both Agnes and Yohan turned their attention to her.
"It seems so. Even your companions are quite unusual. They must have gathered around you."
A human, an elf, and a half-troll. Even to Agnes, who had encountered all walks of life during her missions, Yohan's party was an incredibly bizarre combination.
"It wasn't intentional. It just turned out this way."
Yohan said, glancing at Falco and Billy. Both of them carried their own painful pasts. If so, what about this Inquisitor...?
"Hmm... I suddenly got curious about something. Mind if I ask?"
"Go ahead. As long as it's not something difficult to answer, I don't mind."
Yohan asked, and Agnes readily agreed.
"How did you end up becoming an Inquisitor anyway?"
It was purely out of personal curiosity. At Yohan's question, Agnes tilted her head.
"How did I start this work... If I had to say, it was because I had nothing else I could do."
She spoke while looking up at the tavern's ceiling, as if recalling a distant memory.
"Ah, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I was just curious."
"It's nothing grand anyway."
"Good to hear."
Agnes's lips curled up slightly at Yohan's reply. Yohan silently guessed that she might be reminiscing about her childhood.
As far as Yohan knew, Heresy Inquisitors were among the most elite groups in the Holy Kingdom. They were said to be forged through rigorous training and devout faith cultivated since childhood. Because of this, Agnes's lazy, slacker-like demeanor was a trait you would never see in a typical Inquisitor.
In fact, Agnes's personality was far more suited for Junk Town. She preferred idling around, drinking, and playing rather than working diligently.
But that was only her surface personality. There was no way an Inquisitor of the Holy Kingdom was actually on the same level as the lowlifes of this wasteland. She must have been born as a noble lady in some wealthy family in the Holy Kingdom, and just happens to have a nasty habit of turning into a beast when she drinks, Yohan thought to himself.
"I didn't become an Inquisitor because I wanted to. Rather, there was simply nothing else I could do."
"What?"
"I was born in the slums of the Holy City. I was starving to death with nothing to eat when a monastery took me in."
Her answer completely defied his expectations.
The now-abandoned village, once home to a pack of man-eating trolls.
Crunch—
A man dressed in a pitch-black suit slowly walked through the area. With every step he took, the human bones scattered across the ground crushed beneath his feet, but he showed no sign of discomfort.
"They're gone."
After walking through the settlement for a long while, the man suddenly stopped and muttered to himself.
Ssshh—
At that moment, an ominous smoke billowed right beside him, and from within it, a creature with the head of a goat materialized.
"No matter how I look at it, it doesn't seem like they left of their own accord."
A raspy, bizarre voice bubbled from the goat-headed demon's mouth. The man silently nodded.
"The last time I came here, there were exactly ninety-three of them."
"Yet they have vanished without leaving a single trace, save for one."
"And even that one's corpse is missing its head."
"Could it be the work of the humans in the nearby village?"
The man and the goat-headed demon exchanged thoughts as they surveyed the village.
"Unlikely. The humans in the village don't have the strength to take them down."
"Then it must be the work of an outsider."
Some time ago, the man had presented a small gift to the chief of this troll tribe. It was an item that amplified their desires and made the pleasure of satisfying those desires far more intense. His plan was to harvest the concentrated karma of evil once the trolls' atrocities reached a critical point.
However, that plan had shattered along with the "gift," and the members of the tribe had literally vanished into thin air, save for the chief. He had returned completely empty-handed.
"Is there a chance his subordinates decapitated the chief and abandoned the village?"
When the man asked, the goat-headed demon shook its head.
"No. There are no troll tracks anywhere in the vicinity."
"So a powerhouse capable of wiping them out without leaving even a corpse came here."
To face dozens of pure-blood trolls, an ordinary human army would need to gather tens of times their number to even guarantee a victory.
"Could it be the work of the Holy Kingdom's Holy Knights?"
"I believe that is highly likely."
The two agreed. The members of the troll tribe had been influenced by the "gift" the man provided. Because of it, they had grown physically stronger while drawing closer to demonic energy. And the priests and Holy Knights of the Holy Kingdom were the natural enemies of anything tainted by demonic influence. The Miracle Arts they performed were extremely lethal to demonic creatures. Therefore, if a skilled Holy Knight had visited this village, it would explain the current situation: the lackeys vanishing without a trace, leaving only the chief's headless corpse behind.
"But even so, there is a question."
"They came all the way to this remote wasteland, but how did word reach the Central Church?"
The two put their heads together and pondered. Yet, no matter how much they thought, no plausible reason came to mind.
"No. That is not what is important right now."
"Indeed. Rather than questioning the reason, we must identify our enemy."
"Exactly. Just last month, a demon of Pandemonium was defeated."
Even though it had not fully manifested in a physical vessel, a demon—an immortal being—had been destroyed by a mysterious entity.
"Let us investigate further."
"Very well."
The two demons once again dispersed to search the area.
"Look at this."
Before long, the man in the suit discovered something.
"A carriage?"
"It's too small for trolls to ride."
"Then it must belong to another race."
What the man had found was a completely wrecked carriage, abandoned where it lay.
"It looks like it was destroyed during a battle."
"I found this in the wreckage."
The goat-headed demon had also found something. It pulled a remarkably sturdy iron chain from the wreckage.
"An imperial iron chain."
"Does this mean a group from the Empire came here, rather than Holy Knights?"
While hunting demons and their worshippers was typically the specialty of the Holy Kingdom's Holy Knights and Inquisitors, there was nothing stopping others from doing so.
"Or perhaps the Empire and the Holy Kingdom are cooperating."
"Either way, this is not good."
The two demons were well aware that the Central Church was tracking Pandemonium. However, the information leak this time was far faster than anticipated. On top of that, the mysterious pursuer's skills were extraordinary. If a squad of Holy Knights had come all this way, there should have been traces of a large group of armed humans moving about, but there were none.
"Perhaps we have already fallen into a trap."
"Yes. Let us return quickly."
"A powerful enemy is pursuing us. It is highly likely to be a Holy Knight of the Holy Kingdom, but we cannot be certain."
"We are leaving. Take this chain with us for now."
They needed to return to their headquarters immediately to report the situation. Both demons shared the same thought: the mysterious entity that had destroyed the one nesting in the Balifield Undercity was now interfering with their "harvest."
Ssshh—
Soon, an ominous smoke billowed around the goat-headed demon, enveloping both of them. Once the smoke cleared, only a lingering trace of malevolent energy remained where they had stood.