Those More Wicked Than Demons (7)

A word from the author: We have reached the final stretch of the novel. This chapter is told from the perspective of the one who placed the grimoire of alchemy into the hands of Moss, the lord. I have marked the special section separately — please enjoy!

With pale-yellow, translucent horns crowning my head and vertically slit eyes burning in the gloom, I shoved the lord straight back as our blades ground against each other.

Even after he had offered human lives as tribute through his alchemy, the lord found himself overpowered in a contest of raw strength — so he burned the souls of even more of his people, forging power with his own two hands.

A grotesquely swollen arm swung at me like a monster's limb, but blocking it no longer took any effort at all.

—KRR-KOOM!

Gathering the current into a single point and detonating it, I knocked aside the arm lunging for me, dealing no small amount of damage in the process.

"Are you quite sure you can afford to focus only on me?"

Lord Moss flashed a wicked smile as he posed the question. But—

"A half-baked provocation like that? Don't make me laugh."

In an instant I was in front of the lord. I seized him by the throat, hoisted him overhead, and hurled him with every ounce of strength I possessed at the white-haired man who had ambushed Yeon. In my normal state it would have been impossible — but with the body I had now, it seemed doable, and the attempt produced a genuinely astonishing result.

The white-haired man and the lord hit the wall with a deafening crash, unable to withstand the impact — slammed flat against it, exactly as Yeon and I had been.

I left Ellie a thought-voice telling her to follow, and moved straight to Yeon. She was in no condition to fight properly after the serious wound she'd taken earlier. I reached her in a flash, gathered her into my arms, and just as swiftly made it back to Ellie's side.

"Haa... And here I thought I could handle you well enough by now."

"Handle me? You?"

—KZZZRAK!!

The five lightning blades circling me surged with current all at once, spitting a menacing crackle into the air around us.

"You dared to try to kill my friend and my lover — for a reason like that?"

"A reason like that... is that truly how it looks through your eyes?"

"I've no wish to hear it from a man who keeps lunging at me even in the middle of a duel."

"Haha... Come forth. Roland. Veronica. By your master's command! Eliminate the enemy who seeks my life, subdue those women, and bring them to me — now!!"

At his words a magic circle etched itself into the air, and from within it emerged a long-haired woman in white bearing a slender sword, and a silver-haired man with a greatsword resting across his shoulder. The pair closed the distance to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠us in the blink of an eye, weapons raised — one striking for my head, the other for my legs.

But I was no longer the kind of man who took hits lying down. I raised the Sword of the Azure Sky and caught the greatsword of the man as it came crashing down, while the woman who struck for my legs with her needle-thin blade was intercepted by my lightning blades. Then, to drive them back, I shifted my grip to both hands, poured force into the edge — and used a skill.

Power flooding into my right leg, I surged forward like a charging star and bowled the greatsword-wielding man away. —BDOOM! Unable to withstand it, his stance shattered and he went skidding down the corridor, his own body scrubbing the floor like a rag.

—CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

A small gate yawned open in the air. From within it came chains of utter blackness — chains that seemed as though they would swallow every scrap of light in the world — hurtling straight for me. From the sound of things, the girls had cut down Cerberus with their blades and were now holding the ghouls at bay.

"Oh-ho. So you felled Cerberus. I suppose the might of a Great Lord truly is a cut above."

Watching him applaud in admiration of Ellie's strength, I asked, "Just how many people have you killed?"

And with a hideous smile spreading across his face, the lord answered. "I never bothered to count, so I couldn't say. Around ten thousand, I'd imagine — but what does it matter, so long as they extend my life and my power?"

"...What did you say?"

"Moreover, I made certain every one of them bore malice toward me before they died. The curses they spat with their dying breaths are taken in whole by the power of alchemy — and put to excellent use."

"......"

—BOOM! —KAANG!

I seized my opening and swung for the lord's throat — but the greatsword-wielding man had rammed his enormous blade into the corridor floor, turning my strike aside.

"You really ought to hear people out to the very end."

"Sorry, but in my eyes, you don't look much like a person."

I cast my sword aside, reversed the summoning, and drew it anew into my left hand. The man raised his greatsword to block my next attack — a wasted effort. The time it would take him to wrench that blade free was longer than the time it would take mine to reach his heart.

—SHLUCK!

"Kghaugh!"

Spewing blood, he no longer seemed to have the strength even to move. He heaved ragged, rasping breaths and simply stared at me. There was no hatred in those eyes, no cry of injustice — nothing at all. Only a hollow gaze, gasping and motionless, as though he could no longer feel anything whatsoever.

Looking at him, something flashed through my mind, and I roared at the lord. "You bastard — what the hell have you been doing with people's souls?!"

"Oho... So you noticed. These three are my masterpieces. Souls torn apart and stitched back together — puppets that are, in a sense, my very own sons."

The moment the silver-haired man finally collapsed and an opening appeared, I was upon the lord in an instant, sword swinging. The blade, carrying merciless lightning, struck for the man standing directly before me — but they, mere vessels whose only purpose was to hold stitched-together souls, willingly drew their swords and intercepted my attack.

—KWARUNG!

Fending off my strikes with his own puppets, the lord spoke with what could only be pride. "Curious why I've done all this? Naturally — it is so that I may live long."

"Worn hollow by my duties as lord, I was merely dragging myself through each tedious day. My wife had long been dead, and my only son never once obeyed me."

"At some point, I grew terrified by the thought that I might be doomed to repeat this existence forever. So I sought a way — a way to carry my lifespan onward."

"I could find it nowhere. But then a certain merchant told me: with this, your will shall be made manifest."

"I opened that book and discovered a new world. A way to extend one's life. Ways to heighten the body — strength and all. Even a way to make people obey my every command! Everything!"

"But there was a price. What the casting of that art demanded was the souls of people."

"And my territory had quite an abundance of them. So many that one or two vanishing would go entirely unnoticed. And so, little by little, I increased the souls I harvested."

"And you're proud of that?"

"Of course. For it was not by anyone else's power that I found this method — I found it by my own strength alone."

"You violated providence, rewrote the fates of others... and this is what you take pride in."

"Envious, are you?"

Was any of this truly something a human being could say?

"If you're envious, then I shall gladly teach you that same alchemy. In exchange — hand over those women."

"Envious, he says... Are there truly humans who would sell themselves to a beast wearing a person's face?"

"A shame. Then let us consider these negotiations broken off."

I hurled lightning blades at the slender-sword woman charging me and brought her down, then ran at the man who fought with his fists. I closed the distance in a heartbeat and cleaved through both his thighs; the instant he buckled in agony, I caught him by the neck and rammed him into the wall.

—BAM!

He slammed into the stone with a tremendous crash.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

With the skill's activation, I spread the domain of my senses outward to check whether the girls, still locked in battle with the ghouls, were safe. Yeon had lost her sword in the earlier attack, so in practical terms Ellie was fighting alone. And sure enough, the two of them stood leaning on one another, trading blades in relays, endlessly swinging at the ghouls that swirled around them without end.

But Yeon was coughing up blood now, and Ellie's breathing had grown far rougher than before. We were finite; they were infinite. If this became a war of attrition, our defeat was certain.

And then — I heard hoofbeats. Not a single set of hooves, but an enormous number of them. The girls couldn't hear it yet. In that case...

I left the man slumped against the wall and immediately unleashed a skill into the ghoul horde, buying the girls some breathing room. The reinforcements would arrive soon enough — until then, we only had to hold. With that resolve, I drove the lightning blades home into the ghouls, sealing their movements, and settled in to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠endure.

Their numbers were far beyond what I had expected.

"Give up now. How long do you imagine you can hold out against all those ghouls and my masterpieces?"

"Well — long or short, you only find out by trying!"

"I'm afraid such words mean nothing when the gap is this enormous."

"An enormous gap? Says who?"

"They say ignorance breeds boldness. You simply don't understand. People who believe that courage alone — with no grounds, no advantage, nothing — can accomplish anything."

"I hate people like you. Ignorant, and base beyond measure — without even realizing that your courage is mere arrogance. In the end, you're nothing but fools chasing the bright light, too stupid to notice your own wings catching fire."

"Defying the natural order? Then who decides that order, hmm? Does the Emperor decide it? Or does your precious Azure Dragon — the one who granted you that lofty power — decide it?"

"Or do you decide it, oh great Successor of the Divine Beasts?! Well then — say something!!"

To the lord shrieking at me, I opened my mouth. "Don't dodge the point, you bastard. In the end, you just wanted to do whatever you pleased — that's all this ever was."

"Quoting my own words back at me, I see. So you believe what you've done here is justified."

Wrong. Dead wrong. I shifted my body aside and pointed at the ghouls closing in on us. "Do you honestly believe this is just? While you strip people of their souls and their lives!"

"What is wrong with a human being honest about his desires? Desire grants people a reason to go on living — grants them hope... I merely lived watching that desire."

That much, I agreed with. The desire to live was one of the greatest reasons I myself had survived to become the Azure Dragon's Successor. But where that bastard and I differed—

"Your desire is wrong, you lunatic. Sate your desire alone, and no one gives a damn. Who cares? No one. But force your desire on other people, and of course they resist. Those victims were people, same as you — people who, just like you, burned their own desires as firewood to keep living."

"Then what was I supposed to do?! Live on like that, in that tedious life where nothing ever improves?! Is that your answer, Successor of the Azure Dragon?!"

Pathetic bastard. "Why are you looking to me for answers? I'm not your signpost. I can barely keep this one body of mine alive — I don't know why you're hunting for answers in me. You find the answer yourself, decide it yourself — and whatever answer you arrive at on your own, that is the answer."

"How old do you think I look? I'm barely twenty. An answer even a twenty-year-old can work out — and you dodged it, cast it aside because it was too hard to solve. You threw it away. And this is the atrocity that made. Do you have any idea how many people suffered and died because of that single desire of yours?!"

He came toward me with a grin that made my skin crawl. "Kukukuku... Hahahaha!! Hhk—! Ha. So what if I did? So long as I can sate my desire, what does anyone else's desire matter?"

"How are you any different from a demon?"

"It doesn't matter! To achieve my greater desire, I will offer up ever more people, seize endless life and boundless power, and grow stronger still!"

With that roar, he struck down the woman standing before him and harvested her soul on the spot. "What will you do now? Their souls have already been absorbed — become my nourishment. Successor of the Divine Beasts — what can you possibly do?"

Just as I was about to stride forward, rage detonating in my chest, Ellie caught my shoulder — and in her eyes was a silent plea to let her finish this. She was right. I too was a Successor of the Divine Beasts, charged with the duty of guarding this continent. But this land was, beyond any doubt, Ellie's domain — the frontline she herself had sworn to protect.

"Lord Moss. You're right."

"Ha. So now you play the understanding one. You — born into the Cumul family, handed a flourishing territory for no reason but the accident of being its heir, you wretched girl."

"A Successor of the Divine Beasts holds no gift for calling back the dead. But I do know, at the very least, one way to soothe their souls."

...What?

Back at the very beginning, when Ellie had rescued me and I glimpsed her status window, her trait Radiant Light had been a unique one — written to evolve into something new the moment she formed a contract with me. I had assumed it evolved right then and there, at our contract; I had assumed its unseen, invisible nature was simply what it was. I had been wrong.

"To honor and comfort the souls of the wrongfully dead — that is the one and only way, and your final means of felling me."

Ellie's blade blazed — past its azure aura, it became a white flame burning away the wicked dark.

"What is that flame?"

Ellie swung her wind-sword, wreathed in white fire, straight ahead of her.

—FWOOOSH! KWAANG!

"This flame carries my gratitude — toward those who believed in me and always put me first. And it is a sword of exorcism, forged for the punishment of the wicked."

Barely tearing himself free of the white flame, he shouted at Ellie through ragged breaths. "Even that man — a Successor of the Divine Beasts — could not cut me down. And you imagine you can?"

It was a declaration brimming with the will never to be felled by her hand — but the lord had already forgotten his moment to flee. Without his three so-called masterpieces and Cerberus, he held nothing that truly troubled us — and my lightning blades were still steadily thinning ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ghoul ranks, exactly as I intended.

"They're here."

With my words, a middle-aged woman's voice rang out through the castle. "Seize Lord Moss of Haizi!"

The reinforcements, answering the signal I had sent Leon, had finally arrived. I hadn't bled my breath arguing with that trash merely to shatter his logic head-on and break him — I had also been stalling for time until the reinforcements came. Any truly seasoned fighter would have seen through the stalling, but Moss had never once stood on a front line in his life, and so he never noticed my intent.

Soon an overwhelming tide of soldiers poured into the lord's castle, blades drawn, forming a ring of steel around him. The lord glared at us one last time — then fused every scrap of alchemy he possessed, over and over, until he had grown that swollen arm into something far more colossal than before.

"If I bring this down upon the corridor, right here and now — do you imagine the corridor will hold?"

This bastard — he meant to collapse the corridor and bury us all alive! I recalled the lightning blades from the ghouls in a flash and swung them to pin down his bloated right arm — and in the very same instant, seized the opening and severed that arm with my own hands.

In a single flash, power flooding into my right leg, I succeeded in cleaving his arm away.

"This is not the end. With my son's soul as tribute, I will become a perfect creature — stronger and longer-lived than anything that has ever lived!!"

With those words he tore straight through the ceiling with his alchemy and leapt up after his son. What did he think a life was? He would devour his own child to grow stronger? Yeon and Ellie, hearing it, were burning with fury as well — and together we made our final strike to stop his rampage.

We asked the knights who had climbed up to support us to focus on the ghouls so they could not interfere; they recognized us in an instant, nodded, and set about exterminating the horde. Yeon borrowed a sword from one of the knights and sheathed it in crimson mana, forging her aura blade. I had my lightning. Ellie had her white flame. Yeon had her sword-aura.

"I will not die here! I will become perfect...!!"

His speech was beginning to change. A voice like grinding scrap — the grating timbre unique to demons — swallowed every corner of the mansion, and a monstrous pressure bore down upon us.

Demonization. When a human consumed by desire fails to attain it and that frustrated will reaches its very peak, they take the world's hatred as nourishment and remake their flesh. Had the process run its full course, he would have been reborn as a new demon of Great Demon class —

Calling his son's name, he began to hunt for the boy. We moved to follow him and save the child first. Thinking that securing the boy came above all else, I set out to find Louis immediately — and within about five minutes, we located him before his father did: a man crouched low with both hands pressed over his own mouth, trembling in terror for his life.

Soon after we arrived, Moss reached his son. He seized the boy's arm, pinned him fast — and opened his jaws to devour his soul. But Ellie saw it coming, and in the same breath she hurled sword-aura wreathed in white flame into the lord's eyes and arm.

The white flame lodged itself squarely in the lord's throat and began devouring everything around it at a ferocious pace. It refused to die down from his body for a long while — instead, the burning only spread wider and wider.

Then it was my turn. I detonated the current coiled within my lightning blades and the Sword of the Azure Sky all at once, searing the blazing flesh with fresh agony and carving away what remained of his strength.

And last of all came Yeon, leaping high into the air, rising to take the lord's head. "You should never have been born. If only for the sake of the children yet to come — you are a being that must not be allowed to live."

"Die."

—SHRRK!

The crimson-stained blade, carrying all of Yeon's rage, severed the lord's head in a single instant.

The moment Moss died, the ghouls that he and the knights had fought so wearily against all crumbled into dust — and Cerberus, summoned by the lord and barely put down by Ellie, left not even a corpse behind, scattering into powder on the wind.

And so the infiltration operation we had carried out over the past three days came to a successful end.

At the same moment, the quest window acknowledged our deed, and every darkness that had festered in Haizi Territory was gone.

Dragging our spent bodies behind us, we finally managed to escape the lord's mansion. The one who had come to our aid was none other than the lord of House Humid — Jade Humid.

"My lord. Are you all right?"

Jade dismounted at once and supported her. Ellie's face was deathly pale — that flame had evidently devoured far too much of her mana. Judging that none of the three of us could travel immediately, Jade decided we would rest here for a day before returning to Humid Territory. We nodded at his suggestion. Not one of us was in anything remotely close to normal condition — we needed every scrap of rest just to recover our strength. As for me, the aftermath of Thunder God's Descent had left my muscles so wrecked it would have taken a whole team of healers working me over at once.

Beyond that, Jade investigated the castle in our stead. Around ten corpses were discovered in the lord's bedchamber, and a dedicated hiding place for bodies was found in the storehouse — evidence that spoke volumes about just how cruel and vicious Lord Moss had truly been. Shaken to his core, Jade saw to the bodies, offered a brief silent prayer, and held a modest funeral for them — doing what he could, in his own way, to comfort the souls who had died so unjustly.

At last a full day passed, and only on our fourth day in Haizi Territory were we finally able to leave it behind.

Seated upon a golden throne, the demon gazed down at Buer of the Tenth Rank, who flinched at his feet. Having tasted defeat, Asmodeus held her — she who bore the Tenth Rank — pinned fast in suppression, unable to so much as twitch.

And toward her, Asmodeus flashed a sly, skin-crawling grin, feigning innocence with practiced ease.

With a sound like something bursting, the demon called Buer crumbled away into powder beneath him.

The demon who had so effortlessly neutralized Buer and ascended to the newly vacant throne of the Tenth Rank — the very one who had raided the Ellaon Forest, all but shattering Ellie's life and dragging Cumul Territory to the brink of ruin. Formerly of the Thirty-Second Rank: Asmodeus.

Mounting his newly claimed seat of the Tenth Rank, Asmodeus smiled a smile that crawled beneath the skin, and spoke. "Alice Cumul. I shall be coming to see you soon."

His hideous laughter began to fill the vast, sprawling palace. It was the moment the terrible nightmare that had once threatened Alice revived anew — this time bearing power greater than ever before.