Those Who Wear Skins (4)
It was fortunate that Bella had come to the cathedral.
Without her, I never would have been able to leave the academy so readily.
"Sorry."
I reined in the foaming horse, sent it back toward the city, and covered the remaining distance on my own two legs. There was a chance those unknown bastards might spot me, but I poured divine power into reinforcement and pushed my speed higher.
"Hoo."
My breathing gradually quickened. I had excuses—plenty of them—but excuses were still only excuses. I couldn't claim I had grown weak, yet I clearly felt the dependence on divine power that Homeros had always warned me against.
"...Aaagh!"
"......!"
A faint scream drifted to me. Weakened as it was, the sound alone still carried a force that rattled a person's mind and body.
"O Sun."
This was no mere piety. For the first time in a long while, real desperation filled the prayer.
"One who seeks to stand on her own is in danger."
I never slowed my steps, and that only made the plea more earnest.
"Please grant me the light of tomorrow so that I may shine upon her."
I would save her. More than killing monsters, more than wiping them out, saving one girl was what I wanted most desperately.
Paaaaak!
Light settled over me, and every scrap of accumulated fatigue vanished.
"Hup!"
I fully unleashed the surging exaltation. The scenery blurred past.
"Kieaaaagh!"
The same monstrous cry I had heard faintly before the prayer rose again. The instant I threw myself off the path into the underbrush, I felt the filthy, distinctive air that undying corpses always gave off.
"Ha..."
These guys really are something else.
Not monstrous howls this time—ordinary human screams. Urgent shouts to stay calm and respond, mixed with the flustered presence of people facing something for the first time. Exactly the reaction of those who had never met a monster or a demon before.
I kicked aside a half-rotted corpse lunging at the back of a professor who was racing to save endangered students, then burst into the clearing.
Bang!
"You bastards!"
I blew the collapsing corpse's head off with the shotgun and roared. The clearing fell silent for a beat.
"Exorcist priest. Professors, look after the students. I'll handle the monsters."
The things had no intention of hiding what they were—the skin above their necks was already torn away. Four of them in total. I couldn't see their full true forms, but their silhouettes were close to werewolves.
Of course.
"Ugly as hell."
Oops. That slipped out loud. They were so hideous I almost felt sorry for actual werewolves.
"How dare you compare us to those beast bastards!"
"Oh! You can talk with a face like that? Then why does your voice sound so weird?"
It was a bizarre, layered sound—like a fake voice laid over the real one, some grotesque ventriloquism.
"Grr!"
The most impatient of the ones commanding the corpses of unknown origin was about to charge when a larger one clamped a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't take the bait. We still hold the advantage. That one has far too much to protect."
"Hey, Knight Department professors. Are you the ones who protect, or the ones being protected?"
"We..."
Any proper knight would answer the same way.
"We are the ones who protect! Even if we became professors, we're still knights!"
"Then do your duty. I'll do mine."
Exorcist priest. Those who follow the Sun and stand at the very front to destroy evil and demons.
"Don't underestimate him! That is an exorcist priest! He's nothing like the weaklings you've faced until now!"
The cannibals had at least known what an exorcist priest was. These ones looked like they were seeing the real thing for the first time.
"Come from across the sea, did you?"
No answer.
The corpses swarmed the Knight Department side while the three remaining monsters, leaving the apparent leader behind, scattered and attacked from every angle. I had asked the Sun to protect, so even if it wasn't Leona, nothing changed.
More importantly—
Kwaaang!
"Ah! He blocked it!"
"Ugh!?"
A little clumsy, maybe, but she was nowhere near weak enough to need constant shielding.
"Priest!"
"Just keep them from doing anything stupid!"
"Yes, sir!"
Bang!
"Your opponent is me."
I pinned the ones trying to move to shield their leader and charged. The only option left to them was to put me down fast. They had to be getting desperate. To creatures who still didn't understand that swords couldn't cut certain things, that last strike had been pure threat.
Shiaaaak!
Bizarre beast faces, yet they swung swords. And something about it felt wrong. They looked skilled, but a subtle distortion ran through every motion.
"Got some weird obsession? Or are you just looking down on me?"
"Grr!"
Even with the skins half-shredded they still wore Knight Department student uniforms and brandished cold steel. The techniques themselves had clearly been trained properly, but the incompleteness showing between the cracks was an obvious weakness.
"No... that's not it, is it?"
These things. By swallowing the final heart and donning the skin they could use their victim's techniques—but without meeting certain conditions, they couldn't take the skin off again.
"Hup!"
I holstered the shotgun and raised both fists. Bullets didn't grow on trees, and I refused to waste them on werewolf knockoffs like these.
In that opening the two with spears lunged to lock my movements, and the last one slipped through aiming straight for my heart.
Kigik.
"This...!"
"Damn it! Drop the spears!"
Simple footwork and a twist of the knees trapped both spears behind me. Then I drove a straight punch into the knife-hand coming for my chest.
Kwaduduk!
A sword would have been smarter, but he must have wanted the heart intact. The monster's knife-hand shattered against my fist, and the flames that followed swallowed him whole.
"Kiaaaagh!"
Been a while since I saw one get engulfed in a single breath. Burning speed depends more on how far they've fallen than on raw power; these ranked right up there with demons.
"Uwaaaa!"
Tatatang!
I fed three rounds from Horizon into the one that had lost all reason, then emptied the rest of the magazine. Behind the collapsing body one was already fleeing.
Giiing!
Flame gathered. I pulled the trigger.
Pung!
A bullet formed of pure divine power punched through the runner, and just like the last one he vanished in an instant inferno.
"Ugh... s-save me."
"What are you?"
Dampyrs were beings that shouldn't exist by any ordinary logic. These weren't quite that extreme. Given their nature, putting them on the same level as doppelgangers wouldn't have been strange—yet not a single scrap of information surfaced in my mind.
"W-we came to kill you for invading our lands!"
"For such a fair and square reason, you sure chose a filthy way to do it."
Our Sun does not call simple revenge evil. If He did, I would never be able to use divine power at all.
"If you're counting on the boss or the leader, give it up. The corpses are all down—this isn't an owlbear, it's a full raid."
The leader Leona had been driving back was now under attack from every surviving Knight Department student. The true form revealed once she tore the last of the skin away wasn't a werewolf at all, but something closer to a grotesque weasel-man.
"Let's keep this clean. I'll send you off nicely with the gun."
"In your tongue... we are Skinwalkers."
With two of his own burned to ash right in front of him, he had no real choice but to talk.
"Race, or humans that changed?"
"Through a ritual... one becomes a Skinwalker."
"What kind of ritual?"
The way he stalled proved there had been a reason the others burned without even begging.
"By... by sacrificing family! Kin!"
I let a small flame bloom at the tip of my approaching finger. His mouth opened.
One of the most unforgivable sins: the betrayal of blood. They committed it, then needed the hearts and skins of other people, beasts, or monsters simply to keep the power. Peak inefficiency—yet the temptation of instantly stealing a strong opponent's knowledge and strength was apparently too sweet to refuse.
He told me their weaknesses and everything else I was or wasn't curious about. I repaid him in full.
Thud.
A clean hole through the skull, then fire. I've seen things stand back up with holes in their heads more than once.
"Uwoooh!"
Geez. For someone who's going to become an exorcist priest, that kid sure gets giddy fast...
Another peaceful day at the headquarters of the Thousand Sects.
Deep underground, however, the Exorcism Bureau was as frantic as ever.
"Uwaaagh! It's gonna blow!"
"Fire! Put out the fire!"
The equipment room still thrived on explosions.
"Heeheehee... lamia tongue..."
"Hey! Who walked off with the gargoyle-skin powder?!"
The research labs still radiated pure hazard.
In the director's office, Homeros was reading Dante's long-overdue report on a new breed of monster.
"Huh. Bastards from the New Continent."
Advances in navigation and bargains with sea witches had finally made the long voyage possible. At the end of it lay a vast continent. Humans lived there, and of course monsters opposed those humans. The True Clans who had cautiously cooperated with the Empire had run into trouble, leaving the sea routes unguarded for a stretch—and apparently an accident had slipped through.
After finishing the document and judging it fit for the archives, Homeros immediately summoned the records officer and ordered it registered.
"Has this kid finally lost his mind?"
The muttered line slipped out while he read the letter attached behind the report. It was a formal request to take the training tools Dante had used as a trainee, scale them up for an adult, and ship them over.
Homeros thought the boy had finally cracked—yet the same disciple who never showed weakness was asking for a way to grow stronger. As a master he had no reason to refuse.
Money's not even mine, anyway.
He wasn't the one who had to build the damn things.
After we finished cleaning up the site, everyone returned together. The field exercise had produced a body count high enough to rank among the academy's worst sacrifices, so the professors' moods were foul. As an exorcist priest, all I could offer were empty words of consolation.
"Are you leaving?"
"Look after those kids. Unless you're a complete lunatic like me, facing demons or monsters messes with your head."
Anyone who watched those ugly beast-men running around in stolen human skins and stayed completely sane would be the strange one.
"You're a knight."
"Knights aren't invincible."
What kind of nonsense was that? Looking at moments like this, she really did seem cut out for the life of an exorcist priest. For a crybaby she sure grinned like an idiot the second she turned around.
"Do you know why I entered the academy?"
"No idea. They told you to come, so you came?"
"No. If I attend properly for two years and graduate, I can become an exorcist priest right away!"
"......"
I spent six more years getting beaten half to death for that title, and this is what I get?
"Ah—of course it's only recognition for combat and survival, so for a while I'll still have to work under a veteran exorcist priest."
She was openly declaring she planned to stick a straw in me and drain me dry.
Leaving the two-faced girl who dared try to plant that straw behind, I returned to the cathedral. The first thing that greeted me was a cat with a peculiar golden-hued jewel set in its forehead.