The Recurring Nightmare of Elion Forest (4)

The final attack, purchased with Bathin's own life, had been more than enough to threaten the lives of every member of the investigation party — demons included.

All that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠remained where Bathin once stood was a crater, the only trace that an attack had ever been unleashed there at all.

The demons that had been hunting our lives across the battlefield failed to withstand the shockwave and, one after another, crumbled into dust.

Before long, the cloud of dirt obscuring our vision settled, and the sunlight that broke through at just the right moment washed over the scarred field in patches of light.

"Is anyone hurt?!"

The first to answer my cry was Yeon-i.

"Hey... Hyun! I'm...!"

I made straight for her voice, and found her leaning on Moglei, barely managing to stay upright. She was gasping for breath, her legs trembling under her.

Next was Rozy.

"L-Lord Successor..!"

She stood anxiously beside a retainer named Leo, blood seeping through his armor. And small wonder — a demon's blade was buried in his abdomen, and he was losing an enormous amount of blood.

It hadn't been Bathin's sword.

My best guess was that while the demons had been attacking us, one of them had seized the moment of the shockwave to drive a blade into him before vanishing.

Whatever the cause, it didn't matter now. His condition was what counted.

The lodged blade was a one-handed type. If it had been a greatsword, we likely couldn't have touched it at all — in that case, one of us might have had to cut his throat to spare him a long, agonizing death.

But right now, I was here.

The real question was whether my Authority of Life could sustain him through an injury this severe.

That doubt of mine...

"Ghhh...!"

...vanished in an instant, drowned out by his pained cries.

From what I knew, the abdominal aorta ran down the very center of the belly, just above the bladder. But the blade in his stomach was lodged in his left flank.

Please, let it have missed the kidney.

I wasn't a doctor, so I couldn't know for certain. Still, I threw everything I knew into it.

"Give me all your drinking water. And any spare cloth."

At my words, Rozy and Yeon-i pulled the emergency water skins and bandages they'd stashed at their belts and handed them over.

I gripped the sword embedded in Leo's abdomen and drew it out.

If the damage had reached the kidney, blood would come gushing out in a torrent, but...

Please. Let it not be so.

"The moment I pull the blade, you two press cloth to the wound immediately. Stop as much of the bleeding as you can."

They both nodded. Then, in one motion, I wrenched the sword free from his stomach.

"Gahh—!!"

The pain must have been overwhelming, but there was no other way. All I could do was pray he could hold on.

The instant the blade came out, a massive flow of blood soaked into the cloth. The fabric drank up the crimson, turning sodden in seconds.

I grabbed a water skin, flushed the wound clean to clear away any debris, and then — swiftly — invoked the Authority of Life.

A verdant green light seeped into his belly, pushing his body's regeneration to its very limit.

Having just come out of a battle, my mana reserves were already running low. But stopping halfway would be worse than never treating him at all. I had to scrape together every last thread of mana and bring him to a state where he could survive the ride back to the territory.

Otherwise, his odds of dying would climb exponentially.

Soon my mana was scraping bottom. My head grew dizzy, and a liquid tasting of iron trickled from my nose.

Paying it no mind, I kept pouring mana out.

"Please...! Please...! Live...!!"

Perhaps my pleading reached him — bit by bit, color began returning to his face.

"Haah... haah..."

And now, exhaustion on top of it. I could feel the symptoms of mana depletion worsening with every breath. My Status Window was flooding me with warning after warning that my mana was gone, and I turned my face away from them and kept going.

At some point, I noticed that Leo's complexion had recovered far beyond what it had been, and only then did I finally allow myself to gulp down air. As time wore on and his color continued to improve, I was at last able to cut off the flow of mana into his abdomen.

I lifted Leo onto my horse and addressed everyone.

"All investigation members — we're withdrawing."

Naturally, not a single person bristled or pushed back at my order. They simply mounted their horses in silence and took up the reins.

As I rode, I raced through my recollection of the information Bathin had given me about Asmodeus, driving the horses hard. And between stretches of riding, I checked on Leo again and again with the Authority of Life.

It was a race against time — we had to reach Cumul Territory before his strength gave out.

Some four hours later, we finally made it.

The remaining retainers and Ellie, seeing the state of our investigation party, went wide-eyed with shock. And understandably so — one glance was enough to tell that we were in no condition to be called normal.

The family's healers and physicians gathered in full and ran examinations on every member of the party.

The most critical case, Leo, they said had barely crossed the threshold of death thanks to me. Mercifully, the blade had missed his vital organs. They even gave a definitive answer: without my Authority of Life, Leo would have died right there on the field. At that, Cloud and the other senior retainers could finally let out breaths of relief.

Next came Yeon-i and Rozy.

Yeon-i's right shoulder was dislocated and her leg bone was cracked. Thankfully, healing magic could mend a fracture, and a dislocation just needed the bone set back in place — so she was in better shape than Leo.

Of course...

"AAAAAGH..!!!"

...the pain of setting bones back where they belonged was a homework assignment she had to shoulder herself.

Then Rozy. She had taken heavy internal injuries — when Bathin unleashed his final attack, she had been the second-closest person to the shockwave after me. The damage to her internal organs was extensive, and the blade-shaped burns scorched into her skin were nothing to dismiss either. But the moment several healers swarmed her and poured their healing power into her wounds, it was confirmed she could return to duty within a short time.

And then, me.

I stumbled into Cumul Manor caked head to toe in dust, and endured Ellie's piercing stare while receiving treatment. Abrasions, sword cuts, lacerations — countless small wounds scattered across my body, oozing blood here and there. Worse, mana exhaustion had lowered my regeneration, so even those minor wounds were healing noticeably slower than they should have.

And yet, the results we brought back were remarkably meaningful.

We had only gone as far as the entrance of Elion Forest, and even there, supreme-class and high-tier demons had been gathered in staggering numbers. On top of that, Bathin — Rank 18 of the Hierarchy — had revealed himself, and we had even heard from his own mouth that Asmodeus had risen to Rank 10.

It was possible his words had been lies meant to manipulate us. But somehow, my instinct kept insisting that everything he told us was the truth.

Besides — if, before Asmodeus had taken control of him, Bathin had ambushed us or picked us off one at a time, he could have killed every last one of us, me included, and shattered the Holy Empire's order. Instead, he had fought us fair and square, drawing his sword openly, and recited every secret of both Asmodeus and himself.

And the last thing I saw of him was those eyes — pupils into which no light fell anymore.

I know that look all too well. Of course I do. Before I came to this world, whenever I looked in a mirror, that was always the expression on my face.

I have no idea what could have happened to him, a man already dead inside. But until the very end, Bathin had hated Asmodeus with everything he had. That story he told — about losing his fiancée — had it been true?

There was no way to know now. But for the present, I intended to tell Ellie everything Bathin had confided in me before he died.

The moment the healers gave me the all-clear to move about freely, I headed for Ellie's office together with Yeon-i — the one who had landed the telling blow on Asmodeus on that battlefield.

After getting a knight's permission at the door, I stepped inside to find two people already looking at us: Ellie, mistress of the office, and Edgar the butler.

There was only one reason Edgar would be in the office — it seemed he'd been plotting strategy alongside Ellie. It figured; he wasn't wearing his butler's livery but a deep-blue knight's uniform.

"We're here to report."

"Understood."

Ellie nodded at my words and took her seat. Just as I was about to begin...

"Before that — didn't I tell you, quite clearly, not to get hurt before you left?"

A creeping chill washed over me, like a hand closing around my throat. I shot pleading looks at Yeon-i and Edgar in turn, but they simply looked away.

You two... I'll have my revenge...

Having been scolded — right after being told not to overexert myself, no less — I reported everything we had witnessed and everything we'd found.

"You've done well. I've heard your findings."

Having listened to my report, Ellie offered those words and then sank deep into thought. Turning my words over and over, furrowing her brow as if her head ached, she swept her golden hair back with a hand. She had never let herself look like this in front of me before — which told me she found it all quite bewildering.

"So this demon, Bathin — he handed you, Hyun, information about himself and Asmodeus?"

"Yes."

"And it's information you can trust?"

I nodded. "Bathin gave us two things."

"The first: the demon that attacked Elion Forest and Cumul Territory is none other than Asmodeus, risen to Rank 10 of the Hierarchy."

Bathin had named Asmodeus as the culprit of the attack without hesitation, without a shred of guilt or lingering attachment. And as if to prove it, Asmodeus had seized his body — puppeting it and wielding even his Authority as though it were his own.

"The second: Asmodeus's power is not just one ability."

According to Bathin, the strength Asmodeus currently possessed had been taken by killing four demons of the Hierarchy. So it was safe to assume at least four powers stood at his side. In the game, demons of the Hierarchy each held a unique Authority, and when one died, that Authority naturally dissipated. It was the exact opposite of a Divine Beast Successor, whose Authority bore a unique color and returned to the Divine Beast upon death.

Players had always assumed that since demons crumbled to dust upon death, the Authority residing within them was destroyed along with the body. That was the accepted truth. I'd believed it too — every demon of the Hierarchy so far had worked that way.

And now, out of nowhere, I learn Asmodeus could not only swallow every Authority whole ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but use them. From where I stood, all I could think was: what kind of nonsense is this?

Bathin, for my sake, had left behind the full picture of Asmodeus's Authorities — and how to counter each one — before he departed.

"And I believe what he said was true."

"Because, just as Bathin claimed, Yeon-i broke through Asmodeus's defense while he was using Bathin's own Authority."

At the look Ellie gave her — is that so? — Yeon-i gave a small, solemn nod. Once she'd finished, I pressed on.

"Bathin's Authority was one over space. Its weakness, he said, was that it struggled to execute consecutive actions."

That was why, when Asmodeus used the spatial Authority to block every one of my strikes, Yeon-i's third blow landed on him as a critical hit. We realized then: he could not chain actions more than three times.

"If he really could distort the information and neutralize us, would he have bothered leaving us alive? He could have killed me on the spot. Yeon-i might have clawed her way out at death's edge, maybe. But—"

"With Bathin launching a surprise attack, the retainers were guaranteed to die. And yet he came only for me."

"And if he'd truly wanted to throw us into confusion from the start, I'd have sensed something long before."

If his information had been false, my instincts would have been screaming warnings at me. Instead, they stayed silent, as if every word he spoke were true. On top of that, he had volunteered the vulnerability in his own Authority — and when it proved accurate, his credibility only climbed higher.

"Very well. We'll weigh the information once more, then keep a close eye on it."

"In the meantime, we've uncovered something of our own while your team was out investigating."

Ellie rested her arms on the desk, her expression darkening, and placed a magic recording device upon it.

"We found traces believed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to belong to a demon of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠high rank."

She showed me the footage captured on the device — and Yeon-i and I could not suppress our horror.

Of course we couldn't. On that recording, a mountain of corpses stretched into the distance, every one of them dead with skin turned a sickly, charred black.

"All of them, just like the five villages — dead, nothing left but bones and skin."

Ellie let out a long, heavy breath and continued.

"Haah... The cause of death is life-drain. Confirmed directly by the Cumul family's mages. And moreover..."

"We also found an inscription on the bodies — presumed to have been left by the demon."

The device shifted to another scene, showing the corpse of a different man.

"This is... the inscription that demon left behind."

Perhaps worried the characters carved into the flesh would be unreadable beneath all that caked blood, whoever had written them had left the letters themselves untouched by it.

The words that finally met our eyes were a single line:

I steadied my breathing to hold back the fury surging up inside me.

Ellie rose from her seat, wrapped her arms around me, and said, "Calm down, Hyun. I'm angry too. But charging in with no plan at all could end up putting us in danger instead."

At her words, I barely managed to smother the fire in my chest.

"I'm furious as well. My own people are dying in agony before my very eyes — how could I possibly stand by and watch?"

She raised her left hand, and white flame bloomed above her palm.

"No matter what it takes. That arrogance is unforgivable. Killing my father wasn't enough — now he comes for me, and toys with the lives of my people besides."

The ring on her left ring finger caught the light of the white flame she had conjured, its presence swelling brighter and brighter. Then Ellie clenched her fist, snuffing the flame out, and turned to Edgar.

"Summon every retainer. All except Rozy and Leo."

Edgar bowed his head to her and swiftly slipped out of the office to gather them.

The moment he was gone, she turned to me.

"We'll need to prepare thoroughly. I'm sending formal requests for aid to Plot Territory and the Sunset Territory. And I'll be requesting support from the Imperial Court as well."

"Yes. That's the right call."

And so we moved to the war room, gathering to forge our final plan for bringing down Asmodeus. In the war room were me, Yeon, Ellie, Edgar, and the retainers Cloud, Crow, and Haji, assembled in full.

Ellie addressed the retainers slowly and deliberately.

"Retainers of House Cumul. What I am about to tell you may be hard to believe — but every word of it is true. It is information brought back personally by the Successor of the Azure Dragon and the direct disciple of a Sword Master."

At her words, the three retainers waited in grave silence for what would come next.

"The one who attacked our territory — the very fiend who sought to drag Cumul into ruin — is Asmodeus."

They had said nothing, but it seemed the retainers had already suspected as much. The inscription carved into the corpses on the recording had likely told them Asmodeus was the culprit. What Ellie said next, however, was more than enough to shake even them.

"Bathin, Rank 18 of the Hierarchy, leaked information to us before he died. I and the Successor both consider that information quite trustworthy. I'd like to hear your opinions."

And, unsurprisingly, their answer was this:

"You mean to accept information leaked by a demon?"

Their opposition was only natural.

"When I first heard this report, I opposed it too. But the evidence the Successor presented was quite convincing."

Ellie began walking them through the explanation I had laid out earlier. Her summary — distilling only the essentials I'd wanted to convey — was more than enough to bring the retainers around to understanding.

"Still, my lord... if even one piece of this information proves false, there is a real chance we end up at a disadvantage instead."

Crow's objection was perfectly reasonable. Cumul Territory's situation was dire. Unlike a demon who could appear and vanish at will, we were forced to show ourselves on this board — an unfair game to begin with. And one death meant game over. Who would willingly step onto a board where a single misstep collapsed everything beneath your feet? Even the most fearless among us would tremble when their own life hung in the balance.

But Ellie, our lord, was different.

"I see it differently. The one at a disadvantage right now is not us — it is the demon."

"Those drunk on their own arrogance have, almost without exception, met ugly ends. Asmodeus, in his pride, is underestimating the strength of our territory. We will use that against him."

Ellie was planning to flip the game board entirely.

As she went on to lay out her strategy, the retainers — and Yeon and I — could do nothing but marvel.