8. Curse Plague (20)
8. Curse Plague (20)
The ground heaved.
A storm swept through the clearing, swift and violent, then gone.
Dirt and stones erupted into the air and pattered back down.
The circus members who had been sprinting toward Ella stopped dead, as though frozen in place.
What surfaced on their faces went beyond shock or despair. Words couldn't reach it.
The demon hammered both arms into the side of the crumpled wagon, as if making certain of the kill.
A heavy boom, and the frame collapsed inward.
It was a sight that crushed any last hope.
A human body couldn't take blows like that back to back.
If Ella had survived, dodging was her only option — from the very first strike.
The troupe members swept their eyes across the area, carrying a thread of desperate hope.
She'd burst out from somewhere, they thought, wearing her usual cocksure expression.
She's got a chance.
Our Deputy Leader.
She's so quick.
Maybe she dodged it...
They hunted frantically for proof that she was still alive.
What they got instead was an answer, brutally clear.
Someone let out a groan thick with foreboding.
A trembling finger pointed at the edge of the collapsed wreckage.
Every last gaze fixed on that spot.
Thick hardwood beams had been torn apart like sheets of paper.
Iron fastenings were bent, snapped clean through.
And there...
blood was spilling out.
Bright crimson, as though freshly wrenched from living flesh.
It kept flowing, following the slope without slowing.
The volume strained the limits of what a human body could hold.
There was no more room for doubt.
Ella was dead.
Bandik caught Yurakne before she hit the ground.
The bandage-swathed man looked from the shattered wagon to the spreading pool of blood and back again.
Of all the monster troupe members, he was the most cold-blooded.
Even he couldn't stop the tears soaking through his wrappings.
The triplets sank to the ground muttering curses too garbled to parse. The dwarf buried his face in the dirt and sobbed. The skeleton stood with his mouth clamped shut, hollowed out inside.
Every one of them had cared for Ella.
Until Maya came along, she'd been the circus's sole ordinary human.
And she had never feared them.
From the moment they met, she'd treated them without a shred of wariness. Easy. Familiar.
— No food costs. Nice. Welcome aboard, cost-effective recruit!
— How long? Hm, once you lot join, our numbers double.
— One condition, though! Fresh bandages every day. A person's got to live clean!
— All right, fine. I'll call you "big sis" instead of "ma'am." Special exception.
— You think you can call our people "freaks" just because you're short? Good luck with that.
— Ten years old? A kid, then. You sure you're up for this? No, not that. I mean being the youngest.
She could be overbearing about circus work — pushy, sharp-tongued — but she was also the one who had taught a group of people cut off from the outside world how to stand on a stage.
She had hauled their hearts out of the dark. A rescuer, plain and simple.
And now she was...
their Deputy Leader was...
dead.
Each member gave grief its own shape.
None of them, though, let it out as violently as Umon.
"RROOOOAAARGH!"
A roar tore out of him as he snatched up his weapon — the square-tipped cleaver he used for his Red-Blood Ogre act.
The edge was dull, stage-grade, but at that size the edge barely mattered.
The weight alone was lethal.
"You — you killed Ella!"
His eyes blazed.
Horns lowered, he charged the demon, a raw ripping sound rushing with him.
"Kik-kik!"
Zakanuba laughed at the incoming rush.
The cleaver's arc was laughably simple. A handful of clashes told him everything about his opponent's capabilities.
Raw strength? Umon had the edge.
But speed, technique, combat experience — in all of those, he lagged far behind.
The demon flattened himself against the ground, kicked off, and sliced across Umon's thigh with his claws as he passed.
Shrrrk.
"NGAAAH!"
Blood soaked into the dirt.
A scream ripped from Umon's throat.
He forced strength into his buckling leg, spun, and swung the blade again.
The demon evaded that too, then drove his claws into Umon's other leg.
"Ghhk—!"
Zakanuba focused his assault on the legs, refusing outright to meet the cleaver.
It wasn't a lack of confidence in his own combat ability.
It was risk minimization and pure, efficient advantage.
A hunter's approach.
So long as he avoided a direct exchange, that mass of muscle wasn't his match.
Thud.
Under the relentless attacks, Umon's knees finally buckled.
He kept swinging from his half-collapsed crouch, torso alone still fighting, but Zakanuba simply circled outside his reach, mocking him.
Then came the moment his arm slowed — the instant his reactions lagged a beat behind the demon's movements.
Zakanuba seized the opening and lunged.
His claws came down toward Umon's throat.
And then a lasso whipped in from nowhere and coiled around his wrist.
"Hrrgh! Everyone, grab hold of me tight!"
The lasso had come from Yurakne.
The magic lasso Wonderstein gave her pulled in whatever direction the wielder willed, so long as she kept the rope in hand.
The triplets seized her other arm. Behind them, every member — even the Ratmen who'd been cowering until now scrambled out — linked up and dug in.
Zakanuba had no interest in a pointless tug-of-war with the entire crowd.
He'd clocked that Yurakne alone was gripping the rope directly.
He snapped his wrist to yank the line free.
It should have torn clean out of the woman's hand.
But the rope didn't budge. It might as well have been fused to her palm.
"Eeek! My Inspira won't let go! So pull with everything you've got!"
Trait: Inspira — Wall Climbing
Target: Yurakne's palms
Effect: Generates an attractive force equal to whatever force is applied to her palms.
Required resource: Yurakne's Affection level 30
Her Affection level 30 reward was a blessing Kirkeus had bestowed after watching her upside-down wall-scaling act at the Rose Windmill Cabaret.
The upshot was that her palms could adhere to any surface with a pull exactly matching the force applied to them — letting her hang or cling without suffering the slightest damage to her hands.
Her arms and legs might be ripped apart by sheer force, but her palms would never slip from lack of friction. Not a chance.
Zakanuba faltered.
The downed Umon didn't miss the opening.
He wrung every last drop of strength from his body and hurled the cleaver at Zakanuba.
A single decisive blow. If it connected, it would shatter the demon in one strike.
But Zakanuba had anticipated the attack.
Umon was the only one present who could threaten him; every ounce of his wariness had been trained on that one man.
The cleaver shaved past Zakanuba's cheek, missing by a hair, and embedded itself at the far side of the clearing.
Thud.
Zakanuba bared his teeth in a grin as he watched the desperate throw bury itself in the dirt.
"Kik-kirrrr!"
His win.
Umon reached toward him with a pitifully trembling arm, still trying to do something — anything.
The demon sneered.
A pointless resistance.
Zakanuba raised his free arm — the one not snared by the lasso.
This was the end.
He swung his claws down at Umon.
Fwoom. CRUNCH.
His skull split in half at the back, the crack of bone giving way.
Blood and brain matter spilled across the ground.
Umon's outstretched arm dropped.
Zakanuba slowly turned his head.
There was Yurakne clutching the rope. There were the members behind her, hanging on.
And behind them —
the spot where Umon's cleaver should have been lodged stood empty.
He felt where it had gone.
It was buried in the back of his own skull.
Trait: Inspira — Blade Juggling
Target: The last object Umon threw
Effect: By calling the target's name in his mind, he recalls it back into his hand.
Required resource: Umon's Affection level 15
His Affection level 15 reward. A blessing Kirkeus had granted in praise of the cleaver-throwing feat he'd shown at the Rose Windmill Cabaret.
The massive cleaver Umon had just thrown flew back on a straight line toward his hand, pulled by his Inspira.
And on that line, Zakanuba had been standing in the way.
"Kik... krrr..."
Zakanuba toppled forward, his eyes still clouded with the question of what had just happened.
The demon was dead.
Umon pushed himself up from his half-collapsed sprawl.
The members clinging to the rope went slack and slumped to the ground.
They'd survived.
More than that — they'd brought down a nightmare of a demon.
Nobody looked happy about it.
One by one, they rose and walked toward the wagon wreckage.
Umon, barely able to use his legs, was supported by the others.
Wordlessly, they began clearing debris.
They meant to recover what was left of Ella. Give her spirit some peace.
Everyone was swallowing their grief in silence when Yurakne spoke.
"Ella..."
Her voice carried sorrow — and, faint beneath it, a note of startled gladness.
The others crowded around her.
They realized at once that what she'd spotted wasn't the Deputy Leader's body.
A pale, translucent human shape was rising from the ruins of the wagon.
It wore a form far too familiar.
"Oh, Ella... good lord..."
"Squeak! It's the Deputy Leader's ghost!"
"Rest... rest in peace..."
"We're sorry we couldn't protect you..."
"Sniff. You... you have to go to a good place now..."
"Ella... g-good... *hic*... g-goodbye..."
One by one, they offered the ghost their farewell.
The semitransparent Ella finished pulling herself free of the wreckage and stared at them, utterly flabbergasted.
"What is wrong with all of you? I'm not dead!"
At those words, the members shook their heads with pitying expressions.
"Ella..."
"Squeak! Deputy Leader! Is dead!"
"They say a bound spirit doesn't know it's passed. Keeps wandering the place it died."
Unable to endure this a moment longer, Ella pulled off the mask covering half her face.
"No, for real! Look!"
Her half-ghostly body solidified.
The members gaped.
"Wh-what?"
"H-how?"
Name: Ghost's Mask
Target: The wearer's entire body, plus clothing and belongings under 5 kg.
Effect: While worn, the target enters a semitransparent state of matter permeation. Affected by sulfur.
Required resource: Stamina
Wonderstein had given it to her as a gift when they left Rouge.
He figured it was better to hand rare magic tools to the members who could actually use them than to let them gather dust unused.
The magic lasso he'd handed straight to Yurakne, but with the mask he'd waited until they were well clear of the city — just in case someone at the cabaret might recognize it.
— So the story about buying it as a souvenir at a shop really was a lie. I thought it was nonsense, but...
— Heh heh. You're right. I killed him and sealed the ability inside this.
Ella explained the mask's power to the troupe.
And that she'd put it on the instant before the attack landed.
"You can walk through walls?"
"Wait! Then why didn't you come out right away?!"
Under their indignant stares, Ella scratched the back of her head.
"This ability burns stamina, see..."
The energy the matter-permeation effect consumed matched the kinetic energy of whatever was passing through.
Phasing through a stationary wall cost barely any stamina — only the kinetic energy corresponding to the mass of the path you moved through and your own walking speed. If the material was dense, she could simply walk a little slower.
But getting struck by a wagon, like just now, drained her stamina in an eyeblink and left her no choice but to black out.
"Miss Maya's sketchbook, Miss Yurakne's lasso, and now a mask on top of it! Where does the Troupe Leader keep pulling things like this from?"
"Who cares? We're alive because of it, aren't we!"
"Haha, long live Troupe Leader Wonderstein!"
"Even a demon's not so bad when he's our demon..."
At that, Umon blinked and pointed at the pool of blood still spread thick beneath the wagon.
"Wait! Then what's that?"
"That? ...Don't you remember what was loaded in this wagon? It's the one carrying our ingredients."
A shared exhalation of realization rippled through the group.
When they'd left Rouge, their patron had offloaded tomatoes from a cargo ship and filled an entire wagon with them.
— Thanks to you, Troupe Leader, I've had an idea and I'm planning a festival. We can spare as many tomatoes as you like. Take all you want.
Tomatoes. They were sick to death of tomatoes. But they'd never been able to bring themselves to refuse the patron's urging, so they'd accepted the load.
Under normal circumstances, none of them would have mistaken tomatoes for blood.
But it was the dead of night, they'd just been attacked by a demon and were still half out of their minds, and dozens of actual corpses around them were pumping the air thick with the smell of real blood. They simply hadn't noticed.