Joint Class, Part 7
There was no other choice.
It was too late to run. I gathered every ounce of my power, pulling it up from the depths of my soul.
My body was beginning to rot, bit by bit.
"Ha."
If I were an ordinary person, my mind would have rotted away long before my flesh reached this state.
But this wasn't necessarily a fatal situation. Aimless dark mana wasn't as dangerous as most dark mages believed.
It was like leaving your fingers in water for too long—they prune and swell, and in this case, discolor slightly.
"If it's just this much... I might have gotten off cheap."
My fingers were decaying. The ring finger of my left hand had shriveled into a blackened husk.
With cruel indifference, a heavy raindrop struck the finger—no longer mine—and knocked it clean off.
"Graaa...?"
Yet, the Behemoth standing before me couldn't bring itself to charge.
Behind my back, a massive Dark Arrow—larger than the beast's entire body—was taking shape.
"I pushed myself... a bit too hard, but..."
Losing my left ring finger would make daily life a little inconvenient, but it wasn't going to kill me.
Since it had rotted off from dark mana corruption, it wouldn't be easy to restore. But if I could find a decent Dark Priest, it wasn't entirely impossible to fix.
"Die."
The colossal Dark Arrow, forged from a massive concentration of dark mana over a long period, shot toward the Behemoth.
"GRAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
A cacophony of shrieks, sounding like a thousand beasts screaming at once, erupted from the Behemoth's maw.
"Ugh..."
A massive shockwave shook the very foundations of the mountain.
"Gwoooooh! Ugh! AAAAAAAH!"
With half of its body blasted away, the Behemoth roared in confusion, unable to comprehend its sudden ruin.
...What a waste.
Behemoths were rare magical beasts. If I had been stronger and in a better position, I might have been able to tame it.
But not now.
In the game, terror attacks involving a Behemoth only occurred after the protagonist had grown to a certain level—specifically, after Kazot had failed several times.
At my current level, I had no choice but to kill it.
"AAAAAAAHHH!!!"
With a final, earth-shattering shriek, the Behemoth collapsed. Beyond its mangled corpse lay a deep, clean trench carved into the mountain—the devastating path of the Dark Arrow.
I caught my breath. I could use this to my advantage.
Even if it wasn't fully grown, the sheer weight of the name 'Behemoth' carried immense prestige.
Those who didn't know the details would look at me and think, He killed a Behemoth all by himself when he was just a cadet?
"Still, this is... rough..."
I couldn't stand any longer. My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the wet ground.
I was exhausted. Although there were no immediate threats nearby, my body had reached its absolute limit.
...Was this a loss?
I wouldn't die. I had the body of a grown man; it wouldn't fail me so easily.
But Claire was a different story. She wasn't physically strong to begin with, and having her mind possessed by a magical beast would take a severe toll on her health.
The rain poured relentlessly. It didn't look like I would be able to carry her out of here.
Strictly speaking, I didn't just do this for someone else's benefit...
Securing the kill on a Behemoth here was a major achievement that would prove highly useful later.
But I couldn't be satisfied with just that.
If I lost Claire here, the grand strategy I had painstakingly mapped out for my party would fall apart, forcing me to start over from scratch.
And Yurisia is taking strangely long to get here...
But there was nothing I could do. I had to face reality.
I had no choice but to abandon Claire.
"*Sob... hic...*"
Just as that thought crossed my mind, I heard a woman weeping above me.
It was Claire.
"What, you're awake—"
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! It's all because of me! Why... why would you do this for someone like me?!"
"It was a calculated risk. Though things turned out a bit more troublesome than I expected..."
If it hadn't been raining, I could have used my infinite mana to drag out the fight and wear the Behemoth down. Even so, my choice wasn't wrong. Regardless of the outcome, protecting Claire here was the right move.
"I'll do anything, anything! Please... just stay alive. Please..."
"No, you're the one in danger right now, not me."
She had somehow managed to stand up, but her stamina was practically non-existent. This was likely a terminal lucidity—a final surge of energy before death.
Her ragged breathing and fading voice made her critical condition painfully clear.
"Please, tell me how I can save you. I don't care if it takes my life, just please live..."
As her desperate pleas drifted past my ears, a sudden variable occurred to me—a way to turn this situation around.
"You said you'd do anything, right?"
"Y-yes. I mean it..."
I wouldn't die. But if this continued, Claire would.
If only we had a single healer, a person wouldn't die from a little rain...
The hostile dark mana radiating from the Behemoth's corpse, the pouring rain, and a body pushed past its limits. I had assumed Claire's death was inevitable, but in truth, a priest, a healer, or even a couple of recovery potions would have easily saved her.
Unfortunately, we had neither the people nor the items. But if they didn't exist, I could just make one.
"Then... Claire. Can you offer me something even more precious than your life?"
"Of course!"
I let out a dry chuckle.
I expected her to at least hesitate. I thought she would ask what it was.
Yet, in this very moment, she accepted my proposal without a shred of doubt.
"Then... offer it."
My body was at its limit, but this would only take a moment. I just needed to channel enough mana to carve out a path.
"Your life, which is worth far more than your death. The entirety of your remaining days. Like this—"
This was different from standard dark magic. It was far more primal, far more savage.
Long before the concept of a dark mage ever existed, and before contracts and pacts were established to control one another, humans who wielded demonic power had already walked the earth.
"Serve me!"
They were those who worshipped demons, magical beasts, or on rare occasions, 'humans possessing overwhelmingly massive dark mana.'
Claire's eyes dyed with dark mana. Her mind connected to the infinite pool of dark mana hidden deep within me.
A dark mage's power was rooted in a contract.
A human did not have to pay the demon anything beyond what they had agreed to surrender, and even if they were consumed by dark mana, they could still hold onto their original purpose.
However, the ancient pacts made between demons and humans took a different form.
It was a primitive contract where a human surrendered their entire being, leaving everything in the hands of the entity they served.
Rather than using darkness as a tool to achieve personal goals as a business partner, it was a vow to dedicate one's entire existence to the darkness itself.
It was an act closer to a priest serving a god than a mage casting spells.
They did not contract with a demon for honor, power, wealth, or personal happiness. Instead, they offered up everything for the demon's goals, the demon's happiness, and the demon's will.
Thus, people called them Dark Priests.
"I'll do it! I'll save you! No matter what... I'll make sure you live!"
Though she must have felt the crushing weight of the massive dark mana pressing down on her entire body, Claire desperately cast her healing magic.
It wasn't something she had learned. Just as a newborn baby instinctively knows how to breathe, she simply executed what she was now naturally capable of doing.
It actually worked?
Now that I thought about it, turning someone into a priest who served me was a brilliant way to cover my weaknesses.
It wasn't that I lacked dark mana.
Just as a pipe connected to the ocean cannot draw water if the faucet cannot withstand the pressure, the only limit was my physical body's capacity to manifest that mana.
Therefore, increasing the number of 'faucets' was a simple and straightforward way to multiply my combat power.
The reason I hadn't even imagined such an effective method was actually painfully simple.
She trusted me this much?
You couldn't just force someone into this role.
No matter how loyal a subordinate was, they still had emotions. They had likes, dislikes, and lines they wouldn't cross.
Knights serving an imperial princess would certainly be loyal. But if the princess despised them, treated them like lowly servants rather than knights, beat them without reason, and treated them worse than stray pets, that loyalty would vanish.
Loyalty is given because there is something to be gained. Faith is kept because there is something desired. That was the foundation of a contract.
But becoming a Dark Priestess was not a contract; it was total devotion. It was a vow never to resist, no matter what I did, and to surrender her entire mind, body, and life to my will.
Even if you maxed out the affection of certain companions in the game, it was impossible to turn them into a Dark Priestess without meeting highly specific conditions.
Claire trusted me to that extreme degree.
"...I'm alive."
"T-thank goodness! I don't really know what happened, but it worked! You're amazing!"
She was missing the point. I had been talking about saving *her* life.
But seeing the bright smile on her face, I decided it didn't matter.
With the Behemoth dead, the rain finally stopped. The night had passed, and the first light of dawn was breaking.
Side by side with Claire, I quietly watched the mountain landscape slowly bathe in the morning light.