The Grown Muscle of Advanced Development (2)
One second... two.
The response of the possessed shaman, frankly speaking, was glacial.
But the instant his face, slowed to something like a nightmare in motion, twisted in shock, the scale of his resistance became enormous.
“Dharzjadmujura!!”
The wooden totem he had pulled from his chest flashed with light, and at once a tremendous wind and a blade-sharp torrent of water surged upward together.
Whoooooosh-!
But he was already beneath Raul’s palm.
Thump!
Raul, propelled by absurd strength, launched himself to the ceiling in a single leap and slipped out of the way of the attack.
Then, kicking off the ceiling, he fell again like a meteor.
“Dzamujas! Dilajurad!”
The possessed man kept chanting his spells with eyes wide in disbelief.
The bed he had been sitting on sagged, then slid sideways in a single smooth motion.
Crash!
Raul’s halberd came down and reduced the bed left behind to splinters.
“Aaaagh! It’s a cleric! Hurry, get over here!”
As the man shouted with all his strength, his voice rang thunderously through the entire stronghold.
Before long, without even needing to distinguish up, down, left, or right, a huge number of footsteps and signs of movement began rushing toward this room.
Raul gave a thin smile and charged the shaman again, driving the halberd forward.
It was unmistakably a halberd in his hand, but the speed of the thrust was comparable to a rapier.
Spurt-!
A chilling sound like flesh being torn apart burst out.
“F-Fuck! Shit! Tugah! Lugah!”
Only after a delay did the man cause the tattoos all over his body to blaze and flood his body with power.
Then his flesh accelerated violently.
Clatter!
At the same time, bandits came storming in through the huge gate.
“Hey, teacher!”
“Grab that thing!”
Compared to their dull senses and stupidity, the bandits’ feet were fairly quick.
Raul’s halberd smashed through the bandits as they charged in one by one, but it failed to reach the possessed shaman, who had already fled to the far side behind them.
But this was the situation Raul had intended all along.
“That should be enough.”
In the middle of a battlefield where even a knight would be hard-pressed to keep breathing, Raul muttered calmly.
The moment he confirmed that the shaman hidden behind the bandits was moving his mouth at high speed, he straightened the halberd in his grasp, caught it properly, and hurled it straight at the possessed man.
Whiiiiiish-!
The halberd sliced through the air like a missile, shrieking as it flew.
The possessed shaman wore a smug expression, the two idols in his hands glowing.
Crunch!
But the halberd, flying like lightning, crushed his arm in one blow.
“Aaaagh!”
The possessed man screamed, eyes rolling back in his head.
And then the phenomenon Raul had been expecting finally came to pass.
From the idol in the man’s heart, head, and both hands, a disorderly crimson force began to rampage out of control.
It was a phenomenon that often happened to mages as well. A magical surge.
Or perhaps, in this case, it should have been called a surge of divine power.
The rampaging power ricocheted everywhere like lightning and swept over everyone in the room, then over the bandits nearby as well.
Raul included.
When he opened his eyes,
blood was pouring from the slit that had opened across Raul’s neck.
His arms and legs were no different.
His body collapsed piece by piece, spilling enough blood to form a pool.
And yet, just as his head fell with a soft thud, a familiar message appeared before him.
“Halo destroys the curse.”
The moment he closed his eyes and opened them again, Raul’s body was perfectly fine.
“Uuugh...”
“Aagh!”
“Cough! Co...ugh!”
Only the bandits, who had been swarming like a nest of insects, were sprawled helplessly on the ground, groaning without end.
“A shaman grows by properly mastering even a small amount of power, but a possessed shaman tends to rely on brute force, trying to win through sheer quantity of power received from a demon.”
With an unruffled expression, Raul walked over, made a massive crack in a pillar of the building, and gripped the handle of the halberd embedded there.
“That’s why you’re especially vulnerable to power surges. You lot are just living bombs. That’s all you are.”
The one Raul looked down on as he said that was the possessed shaman, whose left arm had been blown clean off and whose right shoulder had been hideously torn apart.
“Get it? You traitorous bastard of the Areatu tribe.”
When Raul said it as though he knew every detail of the tribe’s inner workings, the possessed shaman glared back at him with distorted fury.
Those were still eyes that had not yet lost their fighting spirit.
Clang!
But as though he cared nothing for the man’s emotions or will, Raul brought the edge of the halberd down in front of his nose with a flat, indifferent face and said, “Now then, shall we talk? You said the demon’s egg was something you grew from a seed. Who was it? Who gave you that seed?”
“Y-you crazy...!”
Even in response to Raul’s question, the possessed man kept rolling his eyes, searching for a way out.
“Now, now.”
As the divinity Raul called forth wrapped itself around the halberd, the possessed shaman, blood leaking from his nose, screamed.
“Aaaagh!”
The searing pain wracked his skull.
He looked no different from any other demon contractor.
As he screamed, he suddenly realized one very frightening fact.
“...?”
Come to think of it, Raul, who had introduced himself as a holy warrior, had bizarrely never once used divine power up to now.
Only that overwhelming force pouring out from his bulging muscles. He had subdued half of this stronghold with nothing but strength.
...
The possessed shaman’s eyes went wide for a moment, then he painfully turned his head and looked up.
Those obsidian eyes looking down at him.
And on the corner of his mouth, from the moment they had met until now, there had been that same strange smile.
Seeing that smile, the possessed shaman understood.
That even the overwhelming might the holy warrior before him had displayed was not his true power.
He had the face of someone enjoying a game.
He’s not an ordinary holy warrior. At minimum, he’s a captain of warriors, no, maybe above that... an inquisitor!?
If he was one of Motala’s inquisitors, then everything made sense.
More than 300 bandits, and even the 100 or so members of the merchant guild, would all be nothing but scarecrows to him.
Fear.
The smile carried a terror so overwhelming it made his knees go weak.
“I-I’ll talk.”
The possessed shaman already knew he was trapped in a pit from which he could not escape, no matter how desperately he flailed.
***
“Briefly.”
Raul spoke in a heavy voice to the possessed shaman, who had been rambling on about his life story for what felt like ages.
The question had been relatively simple: who gave him that thing called a “seed”?
But the possessed shaman’s answer had started from why he had been forced to make a contract with a demon in the first place, and there was no end in sight.
“B-but... I only got tangled up with those people because of my contract with my master...”
“If you’re talking, keep it short and to the point. Or do you want me to hit you until it’s short and to the point?”
At Raul’s dry voice, the possessed man shut his mouth with a sharp little gasp.
Apparently he had intended to pour out his pitiful life and play for sympathy, assuming Raul was some kind of Motala “inquisitor”...
Unfortunately for him, Raul had no interest in his sob story whatsoever.
What interested him was only the information about the freaks who turned up carrying this thing called a “seed.”
Still, Raul’s warning seemed to work, and the possessed shaman obediently opened his mouth.
“They said they were members of the Underground Gutter Society. As another shaman, I’d never seen such thick, immense power in my life.”
“And?”
“They always appeared wrapped in thick robes, like ghosts, so I couldn’t tell who they were. But I could roughly guess their identity from the peculiar way they spoke, and from what I managed to steal a glimpse of.”
The possessed shaman hesitated strangely.
He seemed afraid of the backlash that would come after spilling everything.
So Raul extended a carrot instead of a whip, if only to get clean information without distortion.
“A guess, then. Fine. According to your deduction, who were they? If your information truly has value, I swear on my name I’ll pardon you by the same measure.”
Then the possessed shaman’s face brightened all at once.
Right. He had been using his head to lessen the weight of the “judgment” he was about to receive, even a little.
“Skin bluer than a frozen corpse, and a body so hard that even with absurd amounts of power, they suffered no side effects at all. They were surely the rulers of the northern wastes of Tetra Mountain. Frost Iron Orcs.”
“Huh.”
To be blunt, Raul was somewhat surprised.
He had not expected “orc” to come out of nowhere like that.
“You’re sure? Frost Iron Orcs raising a seed for the demon’s egg?”
“I’m certain. Even if I’m wrong, there’s no doubt at all that they were involved!”
“I see.”
“Y-yes!”
As concern deepened on Raul’s face, the man’s expression brightened.
He had grown certain from Raul’s reaction that his information held more value than he had expected.
“So then I...”
If he was lucky, maybe he would not only keep his life, but even walk out on both legs.
Such a threadbare hope flickered in the possessed shaman’s face.
But Raul, still frowning, said, “Yes. You did well to tell me. It was certainly an appearance I hadn’t expected.”
The possessed man was so pleased by Raul’s first praise that he almost smiled with delight.
And then, in that very instant, without the slightest hesitation, Raul brought the ferocious blade of the halberd down on his neck.
Clang!
“Wha—...”
The possessed man’s dying cry, stained with betrayal and confusion, was wrapped in thick power and struck the edge of Raul’s ear with a numbing throb.
But Raul only stared at the corpse with an expression heavy with revulsion and said, “Sending you off without pain is the last mercy I’ll give.”
He was a man who despised demon contractors more than anyone else.
***
“Sir!”
When he made for the main gate of the stronghold, he found the knight Lergal and his party waiting there.
Their role had been to restrain the merchant guild members who had been fleeing disgracefully, along with the nobles who had been hiding, in the event that Raul’s meeting with the possessed shaman caused a disturbance.
“Did it go well?”
“Yes! Our numbers were too small, so we missed quite a few fugitives, but we did collect various pieces of evidence, such as merchant guild marks and noble house emblems.”
Raul wasn’t actually that interested, but he nodded hard anyway, as if listening closely to the knight’s report.
To them, he had to remain a benevolent and righteous holy warrior of Motala, nothing else.
“Did you find the other comrades?”
But at Raul’s question, which cut straight to the point, the knight froze for an instant like stone, then forced out an awkward smile.
“Benjamin... Benjamin was safe.”
And the rest?
He did not ask that stupid question.
There was no need.
“That’s a relief.”
“Yes, a relief... yes. Truly, a tremendous relief. If Lord Raul had not been here, something terrible would have happened to Benjamin too... yes.”
The knight’s face was a mixture of many conflicting emotions.
Raul looked up at the sun, which had already risen above the horizon.
Then he looked at the knight’s face, now painted in orange light as well.
A young knight who was bold, yet capable of conversation, and who still seemed promising for the future.
A man who was unusually cheerful in this desolate, barren place called Exeria, and who was also a proper knight in every sense.
Raul felt a heavy sense of responsibility as he silently watched the knight crying without tears or sobs, and then he said, almost offhandedly, “On the road back to Zern, there should be a village called Latina.”
“...A village?”
“Yes. If you tell the vigilante named Sam or the village elder grandmother that I sent you, they should treat you well.”
Lergal blinked, his eyes round, at Raul’s seemingly disconnected words.
“Why? Why are you telling me this...”
The knight trailed off, not understanding, but Raul himself had no answer to give.
Why, indeed.
Why had he introduced this knight to Latina Village?
Because he felt sorry for him?
Or because he thought he would take good care of the village?
No, it wasn’t that.
Raul was surely just curious.
What would happen if a proper priest and a proper knight, two of the few left in this world, met each other?
Raul was the kind of man who had plenty of curiosity but not much in the way of kindness or courtesy, so the truth of his motive was most likely nothing more than a question.
Still, he could hardly say that out loud as a “gamer,” so as always, Raul put a plausible lie into words.
“No matter how good a sword is, if it keeps passing through the forge and nothing else, it’ll break before its time is done. I hope that clean, pure village can become a small refuge for you, Lergal.”
Even with Raul’s words, which were nothing but a lie, the knight ended up shedding a tear.
There really were a lot of crybabies in this place.
***
Raul left the cleanup of the aftermath to the knight’s party and gathered up a number of things in a hurry.
Taking care of the abducted victims and the slaves sold here through human trafficking alone would already have eaten up a great deal of time...
But once the people from the merchant guild and the nobles captured by the knight’s party were dragged into it as well, the matter had grown much larger.
Raul immediately prepared to leave.
No doubt “she” had already reached the foot of Tetra Mountain.
If she was the Celia he knew, she had probably already tracked his movements and reached the mountain village long ago.
She was always, everywhere, frighteningly a genius.
Nothing happened while I was away, right?
The possessed shaman who had led those men was already dealt with personally by Raul, and the so-called elite bandits who had been nurturing huge desecration bugs in their bodies had all been burned to ash on the way out.
Above all, she would be arriving here soon enough.
He did not seem to need to worry about any disaster like “what if.”
Young Knight Lergal might see this incident as an overwhelming catastrophe impossible to carry on his shoulders, but for Holy Warrior Celia, it was probably nothing more than a trivial nuisance.
While the knight’s party busied themselves tying up the bandits, Raul looted the stronghold’s kitchen and vault.
“Oh.”
As expected from a place visited by multiple merchant guilds, there were plenty of small but valuable oddities lying around.
This should be worth more than twenty gold coins.
The contents of his pockets, which he had already thought were fairly full thanks to his previous exploits, improved by another factor of two.
Raul smiled as brightly as he had when he first found “ancient human synergy” before the old stone statue.
After picking up a bit of food and some simple gear, then fastening them into the inner pocket of his robe and onto the military belt with the dagger sheath attached, he was fully prepared for the next journey.
As Raul came out through the stronghold’s main gate, the knight approached him as if he had been waiting.
“Holy Warrior. Might I dare ask where you’re going?”
When Raul looked at him, Lergal cried out with a resolute face, “I’ll report your deeds to my lord exactly as they happened! I’ll make sure songs praising your achievements ring out across every domain in the western region! I swear I’ll spread your greatness to the world!”
At that pure, steadfast sight, Raul gave a faint snort and answered, “North.”
There was no regret in his calm voice, the voice of someone who had already long accepted that parting would come wherever he went.
The remaining matters were the lord’s sword and the adventurers hired under his request; they did not seem to be the responsibility of a wanderer.
This was as far as a wandering warrior could interfere.
“Then we’ll meet again.”
Raul looked toward the sun, which now stood high above the horizon, took his bearings, and turned north.
He left without boasting of the miracle he had carved out alone, without showing it off, simply disappearing as though it were the most natural thing in the world...
His back was so much like the hero from a fairy tale the knight had once read as a child.
As Raul went on, stepping over the colorful fallen leaves that had soaked the ground, the knight kept staring after him, rubbing at eyes that had grown hot for a different reason than before.
Even the cold southwest wind seemed to help the holy warrior on his way north.
The young, still-gentle knight watched the man who was already walking the path he himself wished to follow.
The warrior left the stronghold and became a tiny dot.
And the knight could not look away until that dot was swallowed completely once more by the blue ridgeline of Tetra.