Chapter 30
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 030
Chapter Title: The Demon's Husk
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“Elin, try purifying it. You can do it.”
“Pardon? I don’t have that kind of ability….”
Purification was something you learned in the Magic Department only if you double-majored in medicine.
Healing and purification were target-specific magics, unlike standard destructive spells. They changed the target in a specific way, with conditions like what, how, and by what means.
Without a medical approach, you couldn’t use them.
‘That’s why priests’ healing is lower difficulty and less efficient.’
But there was one power that came with those properties from the start.
‘Symbols.’
Entities long recognized as possessing such power could exhibit those qualities without special approaches.
“Elizé is the spirit of the great lake that governs purification. Borrow her strength.”
Elin shot me a suspicious glance, as if wondering how I knew that when even she didn’t, then formed a fluffy water droplet.
“Like this?”
“Yes, but imagine something cleaner. Melting away ingrained grime, something innocent in its very existence. A clear azure gem shining brightly. The sanctity that purifies the impure, and so on.”
“Ugh… Got it.”
The water droplet slowly turned transparent, emitting a soft glow, and I nodded.
“That’s good enough. Take it over there.”
The dark purple peeled away, letting out a faint wail-like sound.
“What is this? It’s creepy.”
“That’s the spores moving. Spread the energy out.”
Normally, they’d just scatter everywhere…
But if the botany professor was nearby, the spores would try to return to their master.
“Do it in a single direction. We need to see where they’re being pushed.”
“Controlling it that precisely…! The backlash keeps….”
“Don’t give me excuses about runes—focus on that first. With control like yours, you couldn’t even handle the rune derivatives floating around academia.”
Provoked right in her face, her control sharpened instantly.
This genius with a honey bee’s obsession for perfection couldn’t stand the taunt.
Tell her she couldn’t do it, and she’d rise to the challenge just to prove you wrong.
Shining it straight ahead, the dark purple spores veered to one side.
The spore mass fled the light, thickening as it rose upward.
“Hmph, how’s that? My control….”
See? I can do it—she turned her head to argue.
Normally, I’d praise her right then… but not now.
‘Forward.’
Before Elin could finish, a pile of dirt exploded right beside us with a whoosh.
“Eek?”
A shadowy figure stretched out like an afterimage, slicing through space ahead.
It evoked the image of folding space for instant travel, but it was just one stomp of the foot.
‘Where?’
Definitely forward.
The spores had clustered that way.
My eyes scanned everywhere, probing for energy.
The trees we passed stretched like rubber bands.
Scanning like that, to someone else, it might look like my eyes were just rolling around wildly.
But I was checking each one meticulously.
Then both pupils locked on a single point.
A small cave—no, better called a pit—a narrow hole.
I landed swiftly in front of it and tore away the concealed branches.
A dwarf-sized figure draped in ragged straw matting.
Slicing through the matting and the figure with a hand chop, the head spun away, tumbling through the air.
If my guess was right, a man’s face sprouting cordyceps should be there.
Even if the skin sagged a bit or had liver spots, it had to be male.
“Tch.”
Brushing away the matting revealed a mushroom cap.
Peeling off the rest in anger, all that remained was a mushroom taking human form.
“A clone.”
From the moment the botany professor became a demon, it was a hive mind creature mistaken for a single entity.
A lifeform born when the hive spores gathered into human shape.
Spores couldn’t split off and live amoeba-like on their own.
Unless…
“It’s already sprouted once.”
Spores were meant to germinate by nature.
Among the hive, certain spores met conditions and sprouted, leaving these puppets behind each time.
Naturally, each sprouting strengthened the main body.
A time-attack enemy.
I roughly tore apart the body with its neck gruesomely severed.
Something connecting to the body snapped with wet sounds, and it went limp.
Realizing it was roots, I narrowed my eyes.
It had linked the ground and body to spread contamination.
“Hey, wait! Charging ahead like that!”
Spotting Charlotte’s group approaching from afar, I picked up the severed head and body and walked over.
“You, what now….”
“Charlotte, stop searching for the summoning circle. You can’t figure it out anyway. Something far more important has come up.”
I tossed the body at her feet demonstratively as she halted.
The mushroom lump kicked up a small cloud of dirt and toppled.
Charlotte and the others stayed silent until the dust settled.
The dark purple mushroom… bore an uncanny resemblance to a human torso.
“It’s a demon.”
Charlotte bit her trembling lip to steady herself.
Then slowly raised her gaze.
She’d been fixated on the body Aiden tossed, missing his expression until now.
It felt breathless, alien enough to slow time in a bizarre haze.
But one thing was clear: her brain couldn’t process the information.
“A demon?”
Before she could ask if he was serious, their eyes met.
Cold, quietly burning deep blue irises.
So deep and dark they seemed like black voids.
Yet when light hit, the star-like sheen gleamed like stolen starlight, sparkling even in the intense blue.
Staring into those eyes brought an indescribable, chilling sharpness.
‘Unsettling.’
Even inheriting the same sapphire eyes, how could they differ so much?
The cold detachment in those pupils was a device to beguile and pierce her.
It felt like being dissected and run through.
Unconsciously, Charlotte stepped back.
She still couldn’t read what this man was thinking.
“…A demon? Are you sane?”
“This is like a shed husk. The main body’s elsewhere. We need to find it.”
“No, that’s not what I asked.”
Aiden, turning to act already, paused.
As his head slowly turned, Charlotte facing those eyes again inhaled sharply.
But she couldn’t take back her words.
“Stop with the cryptic talk only you understand and spill the details.”
Aiden let out a soft sigh and spoke.
“I thought the forest only had magic wolves.”
He shook his head.
“But it’s not just that. So now we hunt something new.”
Charlotte, still not getting it, pressed on.
“That’s it? No detailed explanation, what you’ve figured out, how it happened, or even the cause….”
“Charlotte.”
Cutting her off sharply.
“Do we need that?”
A single denial of any explanation.
He was always like this.
Aimless and dim-witted most days, but at crucial moments, he acted on his own convictions.
No need for explanations deviating from the answer—he shot forward like an arrow from the bow, unhesitating.
But he never matched others’ pace, making even following feel like hitting a wall.
“Time’s short. No time to dawdle. Lend me Elin to find and purify the forest’s contamination. I’ll chase the demon.”
“So, you’re….”
Please walk with us. This…
“Professor. We don’t know where the demon’s lurking. Tell us what you know so we can stay safe.”
Elin, following behind, spoke gravely.
Aiden mulled over “safe” for a moment, then nodded.
He couldn’t ignore safety, at least.
“Fair point. Even with you, Charlotte, a demon’s unnerving. Radia, take point for them—this is part of your responsibility.”
“We need info too.”
“Relax. No demons left in the back mountain now that we’ve seen the husk. Hmm… Probably took hastily gathered forces to the magic tower.”
“Why?”
“Plenty of lifeforms there it can use. Mostly from the tower’s artificial environments… now contaminated ones.”
Charlotte stared at Elin in amazement, swept by wonder.
Unlike her passive self, who’d only get in the way by clinging, Elin forced pace.
That was the gap she couldn’t close, genius versus ordinary.
Hesitating at it, or exploiting it.
It definitely stole Aiden’s time.
Leave him alone, and he’d solve it faster than with company.
But that wasn’t what Charlotte wanted.
Letting him go solo meant shoving all risk and blame on him alone.
So she knew how to handle Aiden. No other way to put it.
“What should we do, then?”
“I told you. Purify the forest’s contamination. Look for those dark purple spores you saw. Charlotte scouts, you purify. I’ll catch the demon.”
“Isn’t it dangerous for you alone against a demon?”
“Unnecessary worry.”
Aiden turned, casual as if there was nothing to fret over.
Dirt erupted behind him, footprints pushed back as if repelled.
He left the same way he’d charged in.
“…He’s impossible to pin down sometimes, that professor.”
Charlotte inwardly agreed fiercely.
I glanced toward the distant bustle of people.
Hmm….
Objectively, I hadn’t confirmed late.
I’d acted at a fitting time, no room to call it delayed.
‘Just a bit regrettable.’
The landmine pattern’s chance was near zero.
Rare bad luck might trigger it once, but direct hits were standard.
Or did explaining to Elin cost time?
Not nothing.
But mentioning safety made me explain in detail unwittingly.
Most of it was useless trivia anyway.
‘Yet I’m sensitive to “safety” even when I should push danger.’
What contradiction.
Outwardly preaching trials and adversity, inwardly fretting over injury or shock.
If I really wanted to test her now, I could’ve let Elizé go mad, cleaned up after, and watched.
‘I couldn’t.’
But… could Elin, dodging the mental shock she needed, ever kill?
Even a demon retained traces of its former human self.
Twisted and grotesque, it was once human—that didn’t change.
Sharing memories and experiences made it harder to accept.
The guilt would hit just as hard.
In the original, students in the clearing got devoured by magic wolves, spurring her rise—no issue.
Would it be the same now?
I shook my head.
“In the end, I have to handle that professor.”
Killing didn’t faze me.
Kim Sung-ha might hesitate, but not Aiden.
Naturally, me possessing Aiden felt the same.