Demon Subjugation (3)

At last, I overcame the crimson dragon's flames and passed the trial.

The moment I emerged, a sword in the form of an azure blade hung suspended in the air, humming ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠softly.

The Sword of the Azure Sky floated there, as if urging me to claim it at once.

The moment I grasped the Sword of the Azure Sky, the Status Window reacted as if in acknowledgment, unlocking the Equipment Window as if to invite me to examine the blade more closely.

Ignoring the congratulatory message, I turned my attention to the sword's stats.

It seemed the clear of the sub-quest had unlocked a skill. A weapon that grows alongside its master — that alone would have been precious, but for someone like me, whose only means of striking an enemy was Azure Dragon Ascension, this was the moment I had finally gained a whole new arsenal of attacks.

"Alice isn't here, so the battle outside must already be underway...?"

I sheathed the Sword of the Azure Sky and sprinted for the cave entrance — and my vision was filled to bursting by an enormous horde of demons, arrayed in long ranks stretching left and right.

And at the very center of them, a demon with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a goat had planted himself at the heart of his army, wearing a repulsive grin as he leered at Alice with eyes full of lust.

"Asmodeus..."

Having faced him countless times in the game, I recognized him without a moment's hesitation — knew exactly what he was: the demon ranked 32nd of his hierarchy, Asmodeus.

Every last bit of this had been his trap. Even though Alice was no novice at leading a battle, the reason she had been driven into such a corner was that Asmodeus had deliberately left open the gates leading into the Demon Realm. The demon armies were crossing over from the Demon Realm directly into the forest — all he had to do was conceal the gates from the survey, and the investigation would conclude without trouble. Of course we would encounter far more enemies than expected. It all made sense now.

Only then realizing that he stood behind everything, Alice began to unleash her fury.

"It was you. All of this was in the palm of your hand from the start."

Asmodeus had exactly one purpose: Alice. And the reason he knew of her at all was this —

Alice was nineteen now, which meant that roughly three years ago, there had been an incident in which the demons launched a massive frontal assault on the Holy Empire. All four of the families who served the Four Divine Beasts had marched to war, and in that war, Alice's father, Sirius Cumul, had fallen.

With that, Asmodeus smacked his lips and continued.

To Asmodeus, nothing mattered but Alice. He had stormed the Cumul Territory for nothing more than to sate his own lust, laying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this trap solely to get his hands on her.

"Enough. Silence yourself, demon. Provoke my fury no further."

Alice looked ready to charge at Asmodeus on the spot, so I raised my voice to stop her.

"Are you a pig in heat or something? Quit with the sexual harassment already."

Whether she remembered what I'd said earlier or not, Alice ground her teeth, biting down on her lip as she forced her rage back down.

As he spoke and began to activate his authority, I unleashed my skill at him.

The azure dragon's sword qi shot forth and collided with Asmodeus's authority, erupting in a deafening blast.

In that same instant, the humans — the Azure Scale Knights — began their assault in unison. Knights and demons alike surged forward to meet each other. And as they locked blades one by one, I too swung my sword at the mid-tier demons.

I parried a blow raining down from my upper left with the Sword of the Azure Sky and activated Thunder Strike. The current raced along the blade, flowing straight into the mid-tier demon locked against me. I cleaved through its upper torso and moved toward the five lower demons — goblins — who had been lying in wait for me.

They lunged with filthy daggers; I shifted my stance and slipped past them. Compared to the attacks Edgar or Alice threw at me, these were child's play, and I dodged them with ease.

My agility and attack speed surged, and I cut the goblins down where they stood. Then I spotted him — Asmodeus.

My strikes had landed clean on him — his skin looked faintly scorched, and that was no trick of the light. Seething with fury, he came charging straight at me at a speed beyond anything I had predicted.

He's fast!

He summoned a sword into his right hand and closed the distance in a blink; I barely twisted out of the path of his strike. If it hadn't been for Storm Formation, I would have been split into two neat halves — Hyun, top and bottom.

My hitting him had evidently stung his pride badly enough that he ignored everyone else entirely and swung his weapon at me alone. I caught the blow rising from my upper right with both hands braced on the Sword of the Azure Sky, but the colossal recoil transmitted straight into my body, and I had to grit my teeth through the agony. The shock was beyond anything I had imagined — like the vibration of a great drum rolling through every corner of my insides. It was nothing more than a longsword, and yet his blows landed with crushing weight.

I can't win a head-on exchange...! A mid-tier-ranked demon is still beyond me!

Just as I was being driven steadily onto the back foot, a blond-haired knight carved through Asmodeus's back as she passed.

"You haven't forgotten me, have you. Demon. No — Asmodeus."

"Hyun, cover me. I'll create an opening. You attack."

"Yes, my lady!"

With those words, Alice swung her sword in a wide arc.

Asmodeus caught her blade with his own, and Alice — willing to let her edge suffer the damage — held their swords locked together as she thrust hers straight toward his throat. Steel shrieked against steel in a spray of sparks; Asmodeus shoved his blade forward with brute force to nullify her attack and shake her off. Forced back a step by his strength, Alice was indeed repelled just as he calculated — but in that very instant she drove her sword against his all the harder, throwing his stance into disarray as well.

Catching it at once, I darted behind Asmodeus and slashed the Sword of the Azure Sky across his back, landing a clean, telling blow.

Good. The momentum's turned!

One contact in my fight with the mid-tier demon. Five more as I cut down all five lower demons. And now another, striking for the opening in Asmodeus's guard. Seven successful contacts in total — an attack reaching for the additional effect as well.

There was, of course, only one place I wanted it: directly above Asmodeus's head.

The moment Asmodeus turned his gaze to look back at the one who had slashed his spine, lightning descended from the heavens and swallowed him whole.

Beside me, a single wolf with emerald fur rode down on the wind as naturally as breathing. Even with this new friend arriving at my side, he hadn't noticed a thing — perfectly understandable, since the lightning's shock had left him still reeling.

Alice looked at him and brought her sword down against his ankle.

The tendons of his ankle were severed. There would be no standing under his own power ever again.

But just as we were about to gift Asmodeus his finish, an enormous serpent reared up from behind me.

Heuksa!

The black serpent thrust its maw toward me with startling speed, its agile body coiling as if to swallow me whole in a single gulp. I dove left alongside the wolf spirit, keeping wary eyes on the dust cloud through which the serpent might strike again.

"My lady! Don't worry about me — attack Asmodeus!"

If Alice, too, let her attention stray to the serpent now, Asmodeus would forcibly restore his ankle with his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠authority and seize the opening. If that happened, a battle we had fought into our favor could all too easily tip back against us. So I decided to focus on the serpent first.

The Heuksa ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was no demon that could be outmaneuvered simply by hiding. It couldn't truly hide in the first place — and even if it could, what on earth could slip past senses that detected its prey through infrared and vibration? It wasn't a highest-tier demon for nothing, but I'd slain plenty of them, and it had a weakness that was, surprisingly, crystal clear.

I asked the wind spirit to draw the serpent's gaze, and the spirit seemed to understand — it howled once and bolted straight for the Heuksa.

My target was the serpent's weak point — the same weak point shared by nearly all serpents, and this creature was no exception.

First: snakes slither along the ground, which makes them exquisitely sensitive to vibration. That was why I had sent the wind spirit ahead — to seize its attention before anything else. Being made of wind, it could dance out of the serpent's strikes with ease.

Just as I'd predicted, the serpent registered the vibrations racing across the ground toward it and charged at the wind spirit. But of course, no matter how fast it was, a snake catching the wind was absurd on its face. Even now the spirit was toying with it — darting here and there, stealing its gaze, sometimes even vaulting blithely over the serpent's own body. Naturally, with its own strikes failing to land the whole while, the creature's temper could only fray.

While the spirit held its attention, I invoked the skill to target the pit organ — the sensory gland that was the serpent species' fatal weak spot. Its exact position differs from snake to snake, but the number of Heuksa I'd slain in the game was beyond counting. I knew precisely where its pit organ sat. Had I forgotten, I'd have had to strike its entire face — which would have meant closing to melee range, a clear and fatal drawback.

The Heuksa might be slower than the wind spirit, but its strike speed still left my Storm Formation pace in the dust. So I aimed for the one spot — between the eye and the mouth, along the nose.

Come on, Hyun... you can do this...!

That spot was where the Heuksa detected heat — the very organ through which it sensed its prey in infrared.

The form of the azure dragon gathered on my blade, and I swung fiercely through the empty air. The dragon's glowing shape was, by its very brightness, an attack the serpent would spot easily. Just as the Heuksa sensed my strike and shifted its body to evade, the wind spirit clamped its powerful jaws onto the snake's tail — and then, as if refusing to be shaken loose, threw its whole weight against the pull. Thanks to the wind wolf's support, the azure dragon's form carved through empty air and struck precisely where I had aimed.

The Heuksa thrashed in agony beyond measure. In human terms, it was as if both its hearing and its sight had been stolen at once.

Using Storm Formation, I darted in fast and drove my sword straight down into the serpent's gaping mouth.

Serpents possess exactly two such organs: the pit organ and the Jacobson's organ. I had just destroyed the pit organ, and the Jacobson's organ was the one that governed smell. Snakes are born with profoundly poor hearing and sight to begin with — so with the Heuksa's last working sense gone, it was as good as stripped of every sense it had left.

I asked the wind wolf to raise a gale, and the spirit obliged, gifting the Heuksa a storm of wind. Now the creature couldn't even thrash — it could do nothing but draw breath, literally. I pressed through the wind itself and brought the Sword of the Azure Sky crashing down onto the serpent's head.

"Spirit, stop the wind!"

At my words, the wind spirit ceased, and the gale gradually died down. I had hammered straight into the Heuksa's skull, into its brain, and I had felt something give way and shatter — so dead, I judged, was the right call. As if to prove me right, even when I prodded the serpent with my blade it showed not the slightest twitch, lying utterly still with its eyes bulging wide open.

With the Heuksa dealt with, I turned to look behind me — and what remained were only a scattering of high-tier demons. The rest were nothing but mid-tier and lower demons, which meant the tide of battle had all but swung entirely our way.

One thing left.

When I turned my head toward where Asmodeus had been, the smell of blood I'd caught at the forest's entrance hung thick in the air. Alice had beaten me to him — Asmodeus lay half-dead, drenched in a staggering pool of his own blood, gasping for breath.

And at that very moment, just as Alice raised her sword to deliver the finishing blow — three of the scattered high-tier demons leveled enormous axes at her back.

She battered aside the gigantic axes with her sword and spoke through her teeth.

"Defending your master to the end, is it...?"

"My lady!"

Alice chained her raised sword straight into a defense, and it was clear the finishing blow against Asmodeus would not come easily. To make matters worse, the high-tier demon known as Creta's Nightmare was slinging the half-dead Asmodeus over its shoulder, biding its moment to slip out through a black gate.

"Hyun! You finish him!"

At Alice's shout, I pushed Storm Formation to its limits for an extended burst and chased after the two wind spirits — but Asmodeus was already gone beyond the gate, wearing a hideous grin. As if to say: until we meet again.

"I had him...!"

If we let him go now, the odds of him striking back in some form grew sharply, and dealing with him here and now would have eased my mind — but there was nothing to be done. The gate had already closed.

The one comfort was that Asmodeus had taken serious wounds. For some time to come, healing his injuries would keep him from moving freely — and I had already seen through one of his traps; the same trick would not work twice.

Before I knew it, Alice had cut down the two high-tier demons — Creta's Nightmares — that had blocked her path and hindered her from reaching Asmodeus, and was walking toward me. Looking over the battlefield, most of the fighting was drawing to a close, and the mid-tier and lower demons were scattering in flight, thrown into chaos by Asmodeus's disappearance.

As she drew near, I apologized.

"My lady, I'm sorry. If I had been faster, I could have brought Asmodeus down..."

And Alice answered me — not with the stiff formality she used with her vassals and everyone else, but in a voice of genuine warmth.

"No. Without you, Hyun, the Cumul Territory would have fallen into far graver danger. I nearly became that monster's plaything without ever avenging my father. The one who should apologize is me. If anything, the Cumul Territory owes you its thanks. Thank you — truly. Hyun."

"Haha... you flatter me..."

How many years had it been since someone last praised me? It felt like the first time since middle school... In high school, all I ever got was scolded for playing games yet again...

Whether she knew my thoughts or not, Alice smiled brightly at me, ruffled my hair once, and turned to go oversee the mopping-up of the battlefield.

It was the moment my first battle in this world drew to a close.

The Status Window, too, seemed to acknowledge it, presenting me with the quest clear screen.

With the Status Window celebrating my success, I set off to help finish securing the battlefield.