While You Were Away (4)
If I hadn't been Hex for real, I'd be dead.
That was how dangerous the attack had been. Still, she must have held back at the last second out of some lingering sense of camaraderie.
"Ugh."
I barely managed to cling to consciousness. Every inch of my body ached and throbbed. Grit crunched between my teeth, and when I shifted my arm, pebbles skittered free. I was literally embedded in the wall.
With a crumbling cascade of debris, I thrashed and wriggled free. Layla and Mela were staring at me. Layla looked faintly regretful, though she was still glaring daggers; Mela's face was pure shock. Even if they didn't get along, watching someone fire offensive magic at a teammate was apparently enough to stun her.
I couldn't bring myself to blame Layla, though.
What the hell did I just say?
Even I couldn't make sense of the words that had come out of my mouth moments earlier. Had I lost my mind? Enough to say something like that?
While I was still wrestling with my own inexplicable behavior, Layla shouted at me.
"Why did you get in the way?! You saw what that monster did to Mela!"
"Yeah, I saw."
"…!"
Mela looked back and forth between us in mounting panic. Whether Layla failed to notice her stare or simply didn't care, she kept going at full volume.
"It melted her clothes and licked her bare—her body! Until she was this sticky and soaked!"
"It did."
Still glistening and sticky, Mela looked like she was about to cry.
"It licked her until she was on the verge of passing out! She couldn't even recognize her own name when I called it, not until I hit it with magic!"
"I know already."
Mela finally covered her face with both hands. The ears she couldn't hide burned a brilliant scarlet.
"Do you not have a single shred of empathy?!"
"And you don't seem to have a single shred of tact."
An oblivious young lady was a terrifying thing. She was carving open a wounded heart with nothing but pure good intentions.
While Layla tried to soothe the thoroughly traumatized Mela, I scanned the surroundings in a hurry. The tentacle was a named NPC, so even a massive level gap wouldn't trigger an instant-death judgment—but it could still die if it took more damage than it could handle.
That last attack would have been more than enough.
Fortunately, the tentacle was sprawled in the distance, still twitching. Alive, then. It had survived only because I'd absorbed most of the hit.
I was just starting to relax, thinking we'd dodged the worst-case scenario, when a strange energy began to spread.
Blue flames roared to life. They swelled until they filled the entire underground chamber, cascading down like a waterfall of fire. Flames that radiated a thoroughly ominous power.
I had seen this before.
"Ah, fuck. We're screwed."
I'd prepared myself for the worst. Turns out there was something even worse waiting past that.
I accepted our thoroughly fucked situation with grim calm and thought,
God-tier game, all right. This many hidden systems to dig into… It would've been perfect if it just didn't have the NTR elements.
A black hand rose from within the blue flames. It planted itself against the ground and hauled a body up after it. Slowly, but unmistakably, a black presence was crawling up out of the abyss.
A demon that dwelt at the bottom of hell.
The earth itself began to corrode under demonic energy at the mere fact of its arrival. Cold sweat sprang up on its own. A creature that wasn't supposed to show up until the late-game story had just forced its way onto the stage.
Why the hell is this thing here?
I started piecing together the situation around me with everything I knew.
Tentacles. Blue flames. Sunset. A sacrifice.
The moment those four keywords locked into place, I had no choice but to glare at Layla.
It's that bitch's fault!
Her magic attack had pulled the demon's aggro. We hadn't noticed, but the demon's body—rising at the appointed hour to collect its offering—must have gotten caught in Layla's spell.
Layla herself seemed rattled by the demon's appearance. She threw up a barrier of magic to shield Mela and Emily from the encroaching corruption and shouted at me.
"What do we do?!"
"What do you mean, what do we do? We run!"
Even a hero's party wasn't equipped to handle this thing right now. I wouldn't have bet on a win at full strength—and with only two of us combat-capable, or really just one, there was nothing left to say.
Layla, however, was not on board.
"Run?! If we leave that thing here, what happens to the people in the city?!"
"Not my problem."
"You are unbelievable!"
In the middle of bickering with her, I noticed something odd. We were wasting time shouting at each other, and the demon still hadn't done a thing. The one in my memory would have flooded the place with minions the second it arrived and turned everything into a slaughterhouse. This was wrong.
What the…?
Only then did I have the bandwidth to actually study the demon. Its form was wavering like heat haze. Looking closer, even the hand planted on the ground looked unstable.
I see!
It wasn't the main body at all—just an avatar. And a hollow shell of one at that, unable to use most of its true power. It must have been forced out through an improper summoning, and this was the best it could manage.
Even so, it was still a brutal opponent.
I yelled at Emily, who was still lying unconscious on the floor.
"Damn it, you've slept enough—wake up already!"
If Emily, who could wield holy power, came to, driving the demon off would be trivial. But even in a situation like this, she showed no sign of stirring. The power delivered through the oracle must have been stronger than expected; her body was still adapting to it.
The demon's blue flames began tracing countless sigils through the air. Layla, a master of magic, urgently drew up her own mana to match.
"I can't wait! I'm attacking!"
"Unless you want us all dead, stop."
If Layla unloaded her magic, we could win—that much was true. A demon in this state would just sit there and take the beating. The problem was the location. If the mansion collapsed, everyone underground died with it.
"Then what are we supposed to do?!"
Good question. I had no idea either.
That was when a powerful presence flared overhead. The moment I remembered the person I'd briefly forgotten in all this chaos, the tension drained right out of me. I grinned.
"This is the kind of thing a hero is supposed to handle."
As if answering those words, the ceiling exploded.
Kyle and Multu had both noticed the commotion outside. They paid it no attention, simply sitting and staring each other down.
The sun was setting. Sunset light poured through the window and filled the room. Taking in the scene that light revealed, Kyle spoke.
"So I was right."
Multu's legs were melting, transforming. Half his body had become dozens of thrashing tentacles. Kyle watched and said,
"You made a contract with a demon?"
"I did."
Multu's voice was dry and cracked. The demonic corruption had already progressed deep into his insides.
"Hero."
Multu looked at Kyle.
"The sun has set."
For the first time, Multu let emotion show—a crooked, triumphant smile. He was certain of his victory. Whatever tricks his opponent had tried, the appointed hour had finally come. He could feel it: the source of his power had arrived in this place.
"Now His Grace will bestow upon me even greater—"
A massive explosion thundered up from the mansion's basement. It was so violent that the shock carried all the way to the reception room two floors above.
The instant Multu realized where the blast had come from, he went white with terror.
"No!"
Tentacles erupted from his body in every direction, smashing everything in reach. Chairs and tables shattered to splinters; one of them came hurtling at Kyle as if to crush him too.
And in the next instant, a diagonal line was carved through Multu's body from shoulder to leg.
Kyle already had his sword drawn. Multu stared in disbelief.
"Wh… when…"
His body, cleaved cleanly in two, toppled and rolled across the floor. Kyle watched it with indifferent eyes, then turned his gaze downward.
"There it is."
He drove his sword into the floor. A blue flash erupted from the point of impact.
The most efficient way to kill a demon was holy power. Holy power dealt up to three hundred percent bonus damage against demonic beings. But only a handful of classes could use it: priests who carried out the will of the gods, holy knights—and…
A hero who wields the Holy Sword!
Kyle dropped through the ceiling, Holy Sword swinging. Blue energy carved through the demon, and the creature screamed.
Layla's eyes lit up at the sight. Her finger pointed, and an explosion bloomed inside the demon's body—a spell carefully shaped to minimize collateral damage. The ceiling was already caving in, so there wasn't much left to protect, but still. Adorable of her.
The demon's form began to dissolve like a mirage.
Having each landed one solid blow, Kyle and Layla both glanced my way.
"…"
What, you want something from me?
They seemed to be waiting for me to deliver a finishing strike, but all I had was a punch loaded with pure physical force. Fine against a goblin. Useless against something like this.
Instead, my eyes caught on something else and brightened.
"Ah—aah! My daughter… our daughter…!"
What remained of Multu—just an upper body—stared at the limp tentacle. Even dying, cut in half, he was desperately dragging himself toward it.
I set my hand on the tentacle's body. Multu's face went deathly white.
I gave him my most vicious smile. My fingertip pointed at the demon.
"Send that thing back."