Upper Demon, Skill Unlocked (1)
In the deep hours before dawn, the streets of Fatal were so quiet you might have thought not even an ant lived there.
If not for the three people with their robes pulled low over their faces, there would have been no trace of movement at all.
The three of them stopped in Fatal’s central avenue and exchanged a look.
Raul was the first to break the silence.
"Horus."
The guardian he called from beneath his robe was clever enough to go straight into Princess Elenoa’s arms.
Meow—
With a small kitten’s cry, it repeated once more what Celia had already warned them about several times.
"As promised, Your Highness, you’re only to bombard the slaughterhouse called 'Helm' in the southern slums from a distance."
"Thank you for your concern, Celia. But if I hear that one more time, I’m afraid it’ll be stuck in my ears forever."
"And don’t forget to leave the scene immediately if anything happens."
"I will keep that in mind."
Between the two women, who had shared time Raul knew nothing about, there was a trust and ease that hadn’t been there before.
Then Celia met Raul’s eyes for a brief moment.
But perhaps because of what had happened before, she said nothing, gave no reaction at all, and simply turned her head aside.
It almost looked like embarrassment. Almost like sadness.
Raul caught a fleeting glimpse of that complicated expression, then looked away himself, the bitterness rising in his mouth for no good reason.
"Then let’s go."
There was no need for any more talk.
The three of them moved off in different directions at the same time.
For some reason, Raul felt a tight pressure in his chest, so he chose to stretch himself by scaling the wall straight up in front of him.
From the roof of the building he reached in a single breath, the western district of Fatal spread out clearly before him.
Raul stared at the outer edge of the city, where the road ran long along the moat.
Soon, he spotted black figures moving busily even at this late hour.
They’re not even trying to hide.
Then again, who would be paying attention to the city center with war practically at the doorstep?
He understood what they were thinking, but tonight the arrogance of those bastards—so brazen it was as if their guts had spilled outside their bodies—was especially hard to stomach.
"Hah."
After letting out a short breath, Raul leaped from the roof.
Midair, he drew his sword, and colorless haze curled around his body.
He kicked off the ground and ran at full speed.
The shadow at the edge of his vision—the suspicious figures at the far end of his sight—was now beneath his feet.
Thud.
But that shadow was beneath Raul’s boots now.
"Who the hell are you!"
The man with deeply hollow cheeks shouted in a voice like scraped metal at Raul, who had suddenly appeared at impossible speed.
The hired men carrying wooden crates all turned to look at Raul at the same time.
"Eight."
Clack—
With a cheerful metallic ring, Raul’s sword was somehow already back in the scabbard at his back.
The gaunt man’s eyes flew wide at the incomprehensible move, and he shouted again.
"What the—"
Slash—!
At that exact moment, the heads of the laborers all dropped at once, and bright-red fountains of blood sprayed into the air.
Looking down at the bodies collapsing one after another, Raul kicked over the crate they had been carrying, his eyes cold and dry.
With a crunch, what spilled out was...
"This is fucked."
Human arms and legs. Nauseating just to look at.
And they were small. Clearly the limbs of boys and girls.
To use something like that as a sacrifice to manifest... Demons were a species he thought he understood, and then didn’t.
Normally, Raul would have only scowled and moved on. But today, for some reason, he was angrier than usual.
His face darkening, he let his eyes bleach white and swept his gaze around.
There it was—a winding path.
The same footprints as the ones left by these corpses led that way.
Holy Weapon [Lv. 8].
Raul clenched the hilt of his sword, already back in the scabbard, and drew a slow breath.
"Huuuuu."
With that long exhale, he kicked the ground.
Crash—!
What he shattered was the window of a lonely abandoned house.
Once he was inside, he could clearly see the people who had been holding their breath with blades in hand after hearing the small commotion outside.
What they had been staring at with burning eyes was an old door.
But Raul, flying in through a storm of shattered glass, caught the pallid bastards completely off guard.
And the instant their heads started to turn toward him—
Fwoooosh—!
Raul’s sword, already wrapped in white fire, was carving through their throats.
"It’s an ambush!"
Along with the heads dropping one after another, the only man left alive let out a scream.
He yanked a hatchet from his belt and tried to look threatening, but the haze Raul had already sent out had sliced through his wrist long before that.
"Aaaaargh!"
With a shrill scream, the cellar entrance flew open, and yet more hollow-eyed people came charging out in a stream.
"It never ends."
It was like the spider nest he’d run into in Coyard.
But even the real “spiders,” actual demons, had been wiped out in a single night.
Raul narrowed his brow, and brilliant white light ran from his shoulders all the way to the tip of his blade.
Holy Weapon [Lv. 8].
The sword that was already invisible to ordinary eyes now displayed a speed beyond its limits once again.
Lighter and sharper than before, the blade left afterimages that bent like a whip, cutting through everything in its path.
And so it went—down, and farther down.
The one who finally stopped that ferocious charge from the Saint was a man with pale skin.
Clang—!
Sparks flew as the sword slipped away from the line of the quick strike.
Looking up, Raul saw a man gripping a pair of bladed knuckles, his arm fully extended.
The sharpened metal he had thrust forward was aimed squarely at Raul’s left chest.
The man, with the blue-black tattoo of demon script carved across his face, seemed certain of victory, and a crooked smile tugged at his lips.
"Bullshit."
But Raul spat the curse out like spit, and with a torrent-like surge he accelerated even harder, meeting the man’s attack with another attack.
Clang-clang-clang-clang—!
The pair of knuckles and the single sword threw off so much sparks that they lit up the underground chamber, where the only light had been the faint flicker of candle flame.
They traded breathless blows for a time, until the man with the tattoo suddenly spoke.
"What are you? I thought you were a crusader who’d entered the city, but your swordsmanship isn’t Motala’s, and the flames burning from you aren’t Ella’s either."
"Don’t ask. I’m not in the mood to answer."
"Heh. Interesting."
The man grinned and blocked Raul’s lightning-fast blade once more before continuing.
"Cleric. I am Varus of the Underground Burrow Society. I don’t know what kind of man you are, but this place is the domain of our holy master. If you want to live, your chance is now."
"...Holy?"
Raul’s eyes widened as he looked around.
The things littering every corner of this underground facility were all pieces of human beings.
And standing like decorations were white bone totems, erected from human skeletons bleached pale.
No matter how he looked at it, this was not a holy sight.
Quite the opposite.
Raul’s expression twisted as he said, "What, if I back off nicely, you’ll rush to activate your 'summoning circle' like a colt with its hooves on fire?"
"?!"
The Halo destroys the curse.
At the mention of a summoning circle, a deep look of shock entered the man’s eyes.
And for Raul, that one instant of hesitation was enough.
His sword flew like lightning.
In that split second, countless trajectories were etched into the air in pure white light.
"Ghk—?!"
Eight holes were opened through him all at once.
Black blood gurgled out of those holes.
There was no scream.
Only a puddle of jet-black blood remained there, thick as oil.
Raul felt a small question stir in him: why didn’t the bastard who had been carrying demonic energy turn to dust?
But he dismissed it immediately.
His target had always been the demon summoning circle.
Several minutes after Raul’s raid began, the hideout of the suspicious group had been reduced to literal scorched earth.
"Hm."
Raul took a brief breath and focused divinity back into his eyes.
Having swept the area, he could no longer sense any demonic energy.
Was it because they’d split into three separate groups?
Subduing them had been easier than expected.
No—really, it only made sense, since the bastards must have assumed they’d never be found in the first place.
Their sloppiness was not as strange as it might have seemed.
Calming his thoroughly heated body, Raul crossed over the black pool of blood and headed for the deepest room of the hideout—the one the man had defended with his life.
"Ugh."
The moment he stepped inside, a disgusted sound escaped Raul’s throat.
This place was worse than the room outside.
On rusted hooks connected to the ceiling, someone’s head, torso, and limbs had been impaled and hung up like a chandelier.
Beneath them stood the same bone totems he’d seen outside, lined up in rows.
And at the center of all those ritual objects and curses was a demon summoning circle flickering with sinister red light.
"Disgusting."
And the instant he stepped onto the edge of the demon summoning circle, a sudden message popped up in front of Raul’s eyes.
The Halo is destroying the curse.
There was a trap after all.
Perhaps, of course, was more like it.
Everywhere he looked, he could see the trick of luring the target into carelessness and then striking where it hurt most.
It was a method Raul knew all too well—familiar, and disgusting, and thoroughly that of the Abyss Archduke.
"Ha."
Even so, it was useless against Raul.
He let out a dry snort, drew his holy blade, and concentrated divine power into it.
The white flame gathered at his sword’s tip bloomed into a radiant blaze, swelling larger and larger.
He was about to wipe out the demon summoning circle without leaving even a trace behind when a wet, boiling sound suddenly struck his ear.
Rrrrrrr!? Grrrkk!
Turning, he saw the mysterious black pool of blood from moments ago surging upward in reverse.
And crawling out of it was a serpent, at least three meters long at a glance.
A serpent whose entire body was covered in disorderly tattoos of demon script.
Raul knew exactly what that meant.
"I thought so. It was about time something crawled out."
It was a demon.
Not a being that had evolved from a Desecration Bug, but one whose very origin had already been a serpent from the start.
Looking at the serpent whose vertical reptilian pupils shone with a blue-black light, Raul said, "Are you the Exceed that’s been coiled up in Fatal for so long?"
At the question, a very heavy bass voice rolled up from beneath the creature’s long muzzle, which possessed no human organs of speech.
"One who knows us. Yes. Are you the mad centurion who killed Madius?"
"For the record, I also killed the black mage Tod and the cursed sorcerer Toruma."
"Yes. A being who keeps obstructing our lord’s grand, ancient plan at every turn. I can see it. That accursed tower of miracles rising high behind your back."
"Tower? You mean the Halo?"
"The Returning Saint... So it was true. A despicable, repulsive existence trampling the desperate hopes of us poor wretches who waited only for the Day of Ascension."
Raul narrowed his brow at that.
"Desperate hopes? Us poor wretches?"
With a tilt of his chin, Raul pointed at the dozens of mutilated corpses hanging from the ceiling.
He pointed, too, at the bone totems forced upright like an insult to life itself.
"So that stuff is hope to you?"
He asked as if pressing for an answer, but the serpent seemed to find his words so revolting that it didn’t even bother listening and went right on speaking.
"Fear, Returning Saint. Now that your existence has finally fallen upon our eyes, the Great Abyss will chase you to the ends of the world."
"Hah. I’m already sick to death of being chased by someone."
"It’s too late for regret. Death will not leave your side. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
Shhhhaa.
The serpent flicked its tongue, making a sound that was part laughter, part shriek.
Raul watched that ridiculous scene for a moment before speaking in a light, testing tone.
"Then before you die, can I ask you one thing? Reptile. How far have you lot gotten looking for Or?"
Or was the target of the main quest Raul was currently undertaking—the name of the sacred sword.
If the bastard had ever so much as heard of it, there would surely have been some sort of reaction.
The reason Raul had bothered talking to that rotten demon from the start was to see exactly that reaction.
"Or?"
At last, the serpent asked him back as though to say it had no idea what he was talking about.
Not a trace of concealment. Not a trace of surprise. Only pure confusion.
That alone was enough for Raul to get everything he wanted.
"So you hadn’t even heard of it yet."
"Wha—"
The serpent’s voice went no farther than that.
In the same instant, the Sun King’s holy sword flashed in like lightning and carved a dazzling horizon across the monster’s head.
Slashhh!
The sharp sound of the cut, too fast for the light to follow, split the underground chamber wide open as the serpent’s severed head fell in ruin.
Thud.
The head that hit the ground was no longer full of killing intent; it was swallowed instead by white fire.
"You should pick your opponents more carefully before you jump them."
In terms of rank, Raul was an existence above even the Spider Queen.
He was not the sort to be toyed with by a lowly demon like this.
Raul turned at once and went back to the sinister red glow of the demon summoning circle.
He lowered his stance, pressed a hand to its center, and focused the power in his holy blade, calling flame into being.
Divine power could take the form of water, or mist, or even a mere mass of energy, but when it came to burning away such obscene curses cleanly, fire was still the most fitting shape.
Whoosh! Fwoooooosh!!
The entire room, including the demon summoning circle, was engulfed in pure white sacred flame.
There was probably not a single evil thing in this place that could survive those flames of purification.
Raul recognized that his role here was finished and immediately turned his body.
He was just about to leave the underground chamber that would soon collapse when—
"Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!"
A hideous laugh spilled out of the gray-white ash that had once been a head, its form now so ruined it could no longer be called one at all.
Raul’s brow tightened, and the serpent spoke, lifting its translucent spirit-like face as if it had never experienced death at all.
"I am the precaution arranged by my lord."
At the same time, an enormous surge of poison erupted from what remained of its charred body.
"My blood will become the marker that draws the flame of eternity to this land."
Following the creature’s unidentifiable muttering, its misty poison spiraled into the wrecked demon summoning circle.
"Behold."
Fweeeeeeeet!
In that instant, with a thunderous roar and an immense burst of heat, the summoning circle opened a door that led into blackness.
And out of it emerged a beating heart.
The heart of Flame Devil Armor—an upper demon, a being said to be the living incarnation of hellfire.
"Behold! The arrival of the burning knight!"
At last summoned, it was little different from a small sun, scattering overwhelming heat and magma indiscriminately in every direction.
It was nothing less than a living nightmare,
and just by existing it began to melt down everything in the underground chamber—
"Hey. Are you out of your mind?"
Raul said it without warning.
He had wrapped his entire body in the white radiance of Holy Armor [Lv. 9] and was also pouring out explosive light through Holy Weapon [Lv. 8].
"You really think I can’t cut that down?"
The pure-white flash that erupted from the tip of his sword split the heart of Flame Devil Armor cleanly in half.
"...Huh?"
For the first time, a stupid sound slipped out of the demon’s grim mouth.