The Demon's Contract (8)
Faye's sword thrust toward the man's neck. At the same time, my kick rocketed toward his thigh. The man had focused every ounce of his attention on landing a finishing blow on Theo. It wasn't flawless, but I could proudly say we'd seized a solid opening for our ambush.
Yet the instant I thought our strikes had connected, the man's body moved with blinding speed. He jerked his head back to dodge Faye's blade and raised his knee to intercept my kick.
—Thud.
A knee is sturdy, but it's also a delicate joint. Block with it half-heartedly and you risk shattering it completely. The man, however, expertly caught my attack with the toughest part of his knee and let the force flow away harmlessly.
With our assault thwarted, Faye and I took a step back to regain distance. Only then did the man finally register our presence.
“Huh?”
For someone who had dodged and blocked our attacks as smoothly as flowing water, his reaction was surprisingly puzzled.
“The Mad Evil and that woman… Tsk. They got taken out already? Couldn’t even hold your ankles properly.”
His next words carried the same tone—an unwitting confession that he hadn’t noticed our attack in time. Yet the fact remained that he had still evaded the sword and stopped the kick.
“…It’s demon sorcery! Black magic that summons a demon and lets it possess his body!”
Claire, who had steadied herself and returned to the front line, revealed the enemy’s secret. Just what you’d expect from a professional. So reassuring!
“What’s the weakness?!”
“The possessed demon will only carry out the exact terms of the contract made at summoning, regardless of the black mage’s will!”
“What does that—Whoa!”
Burn with the flames of evil. Demon Breath.
Black flames erupted from the exact spot where I had been standing. If I hadn’t dodged, I might have been roasted to a crisp.
“Who was it that said not to interrupt other people’s conversations?”
“……”
I tossed his own words from the start of the fight right back at him, but no reply came. What a boring guy.
The man snatched a decorative sword from the wall and charged us. Even if it was meant for show, the edge was sharpened for moments like this—it wasn’t something to underestimate.
“If a demon’s possessing him, does that mean the sword style is demonic too? Let’s see it!”
Faye laughed with glee as she swung her own blade to meet his. Steel clashed at blinding speed, sparks scattering wildly. With me joining the fray, the battle grew fiercer by the second.
It seemed he had surrendered all physical movement to the demon. Even while trading blows without pause, the man kept chanting black magic.
Symbol of corruption and decay, manifest here. Cursed Symbol… Damn it!
“…Ice Wall!”
This time the situation was different. Theo’s magic collided with the black spell and drastically weakened its momentum. It didn’t fully cancel the attack since it had been cast in a hurry, but Claire could handle the diminished force without breaking a sweat.
The man’s eyebrows twitched, betraying his irritation.
“Hah. Must be inconvenient without any reliable comrades, huh?”
Still no answer. Guess he only talks when he has the upper hand.
“…Demon Calling.”
If he had no friends, he could just summon some. The man chanted while raising his hand to point at a corpse he meant to use as a sacrifice.
—Slap!
“No…?”
The hand he lifted was instead used to block my spinning kick. He stopped the kick cleanly, but failed to designate the sacrifice. It looked like demon-summoning black magic required an offering without exception. Since he couldn’t provide one, the spell fizzled out.
As if he hadn’t anticipated this, the man let out a brief sound of genuine confusion. In that moment, I understood the weakness Claire had mentioned. If the contract was to summon a demon to block our attacks, the demon would move to stop them no matter what—even if doing so put it at a disadvantage in the fight!
“Faye! Circle and peel!”
“…Got it!”
I gave the order immediately. It was a tactic we often used in the dungeon against oversized monsters—circling the enemy and slowly tightening the noose. In games it’s usually called “apple peeling.”
Faye and I alternated attacks while rapidly orbiting the man. His body, controlled by the demon, spun even faster to keep up. The demon’s skill in allowing zero clean hits despite the dizzying rotation was genuinely impressive.
But the man himself was another story. From his reaction right after our initial ambush, his reflexes without the possession were barely better than an ordinary person’s. He couldn’t handle the spinning vision and quickly lost control. With his sight constantly shifting, he couldn’t properly designate sacrifices for magic. Even when he managed to offer one, the black spells flew off in random directions.
“You—You bastards…!”
For the first time, the man showed open panic. Failing to use black magic properly didn’t just make attacking difficult. It also meant he couldn’t block Theo’s spells, which had been suppressing us with raw power. Selfish magic that used others as fuel naturally lacked any wide-area defensive spells.
Even so, he couldn’t dismiss the demon sorcery. If the demon abandoned him in the middle of a fight where blows were exchanged several times per second, the outcome was painfully obvious.
“…Ice Spear!”
In the middle of our dizzying rotation, Theo’s voice rang out and an ice spear drove between Faye and me. While simultaneously blocking a sword and a kick, the man somehow managed to stop the spear with his elbow. Using even the impact of the embedded spear as propulsion to spin and block my next attack was admirable—but the demon’s machine-like precision suddenly jammed.
The cold air from the spear had dulled the elbow joint. A gear had slipped. The iron wall of defense now had a glaring hole.
—Thump!
My high kick slammed into the man’s shoulder. Some trick must have lessened the force, because the blow that should have pulverized bone didn’t land at full strength, but I still felt the satisfying impact of heavy damage.
“Hiyah!”
—Slice!
At the same time, Faye’s sword carved deep into his opposite flank. Inky black blood gushed out.
“Graaaah!!”
The man screamed and raised both hands. He had apparently decided to cancel the demon sorcery, chanting even while taking our hits directly. The black mana swirling around him was sucked back into his body.
Uh-oh. This pattern looks bad.
“It’s dangerous! Fall back!”
—KABOOM!!
We had already been on guard, so Claire’s warning let us react instantly. The gap between us leaping clear and the explosion erupting around the man was razor thin.
Thick black mist billowed out like a smoke screen, swallowing our vision. Should we charge in?
While I hesitated, I caught the sound of hurried footsteps racing somewhere. Small, but unmistakable.
“He’s getting away!”
I shouted the alert and plunged into the mist. After pushing through the fog where I couldn’t see an inch ahead, I found the man picking something up. A blood-red orb swirled with ominous black energy… The sight triggered an instinctive wave of revulsion.
Despite being covered in cuts, fractures, and burns from the explosion he himself had caused, the man held the object with a smug grin.
“I acknowledge your strength. I look forward to our next meeting.”
He pulled a magic scroll from his pocket and tore it. An expensive teleport scroll—the kind nobles and other powerful figures kept for emergencies.
A rift opened in the air and the man’s body was sucked inside, vanishing in an instant. It happened so fast that by the time I processed what was going on, it was already too late to pursue.
But one of us had prepared an attack before even assessing the situation.
“Like I’d let you escape!!”
Theo roared, pouring every drop of his mana into the spell. The magic shot forward far faster than usual and reached the man just as he was about to cross through space.
—Slice.
One of the man’s hands flew off at the wrist, hovering in the air. It was the one holding the sinister blood-red orb. The man’s face twisted in horror as he realized he had dropped it, but the activated teleport scroll didn’t wait. It swallowed him whole.
The entire sequence—from emerging from the mist to the end—had taken no more than three seconds. All that remained were the severed hand and the blood-red orb. As a bonus, the original event boss—the black hand—along with a crowd of lesser black mages, were left behind as well.
…….
“Cleanup is complete. No one will know we were here.”
“Good work, Claire.”
We couldn’t hide the fact that a fight had taken place, but we had at least erased any traces that might point to us. Now all we had to do was set the place on fire and spread rumors about a suspicious facility in the area…
“I let him get away… again…”
The person who was supposed to handle that part was in no shape for it. After chasing a lead for so long only to watch it slip away at the last second, his discouragement was understandable. Understandable, but still.
I stepped in front of Theo.
—Slap!
I grabbed both his cheeks with enough force that it felt closer to a slap. The sting must have been sharper than any actual slap. His trembling eyes slowly focused on me.
“Get a grip. You said you’ve been searching for a really long time, right? And you fall apart after one little failure?”
“…It’s not a little failure.”
“Yes, it is. If everything you’ve done until now wasn’t failure, what was it? This time we got a much clearer clue. Did we have anything like this before?”
I pointed at the blood-red orb and severed wrist. I didn’t know what it was, but the fact that he tried to take it with him at the last moment meant it had to be extremely valuable. And its value was surely tied to their goals.
“……”
Theo stared at the orb for a moment, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the old strength had returned.
“…Thank you.”
That was all he said before gently removing my hands from his face and standing up.
“Gather what we need. We’ll burn this place down as planned.”
Seeing him issue orders to the party, he was the usual Theo again. But if you listened carefully, a faint tremor still lingered in his voice.
“Faye.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Look after him today, okay? The date isn’t over yet, right?”
“You got it!”
I called Faye over and entrusted Theo to her. After all, taking care of the protagonist is the heroine’s job in harem stories—it’s practically a cliché. If I left it to Faye, she would handle it well.
Faye accepted my request with her usual cheer… or rather, with a slightly more eager attitude than normal.