Chapter 243: Jealousy (14)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 243: Jealousy (14)
Let’s take a moment to reminisce about the past.
Before my regression, I had firsthand experience taking down Leviathan, the Demon King of Jealousy.
Back then, Leviathan had formed a contract with Baek Seol through the Touch of the Devil. At a crucial moment, she betrayed her to satisfy her own greed, but ultimately failed.
The bastard fled afterward and created a dungeon in the human world, presumably to recover. However, before she could fully heal, I used a certain method to weaken her and finished her off.
I’ve summarized it briefly, but it actually took quite a bit of trial and error to bring her down. Thanks to that, I’m well-acquainted with her habits.
What I’m trying to say is that if she sees a sufficient opportunity, she never suppresses her impulses.
Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to have changed in this timeline either.
How do I know?
With less than a week left before the end of summer break, I finally received word from those I’d asked to scout.
Reactions had begun to stir in the seven locations Aisha had pointed out.
To be honest, I expected them to invade immediately. For an impatient Demon King, I suppose she held out longer than expected.
Regardless, this was news enough to sharpen our atmosphere, which had grown a bit soft because Ga-eul was holding out so well.
After all, we were about to start a war with demons.
Well, even if I call it a war, the necessary preparations are complete.
We’ve finished evacuating the nearby civilians, and because they took their sweet time coming, we were able to gather plenty of combat power. I’d say we’ve handled this fairly well.
If I had to pick one thing that bothered me, it was that these bastards hadn’t offered any sacrifices, though I have no idea how they managed it.
Normally, for a Demon King-class entity to leave the Demon Realm, not only is their power restricted, but they also require a massive sacrifice the moment they attempt to pass through the entrance.
Usually, the price is paid in human souls, corpses, or a vast amount of negative emotions that can be converted into demonic energy.
Alternatively, they might use other demons as fuel or bear the cost themselves by using their own demonic energy, but that’s a method rarely used.
“Well, I suppose there’s no point worrying about it right now.”
I can just find out after I’ve crushed them.
* * *
I was currently waiting for them at one of the seven entrances—the one that was most secluded and had nothing in the surrounding area.
Fortunately, my predictions weren’t off in the slightest. The demonic energy at my location began to surge explosively, which could be taken as a signal that Leviathan had discovered me.
My reliable comrades seemed quite worried about leaving me alone since I’d volunteered to act as bait, but honestly, I wasn’t worried—I was just bored and annoyed.
I wish these fishy punks would stop acting cool and just crawl out already.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, the ground finally began to vibrate, and a massive magic circle formed on the floor.
Then, the half-human, half-fish demon bastards slowly poked their heads out.
It was the all-too-familiar sight of the demons of Jealousy.
Demon King Leviathan.
Her symbolic phantasmal beast is the mermaid, and perhaps because of that, most of the demons under her command possessed fish-like traits.
Their forms varied—some were half-human and half-fish, some had fish upper bodies, some had fish lower bodies, and some looked human but were covered in scales—but in the end, they were all the same.
Now then.
I’ll let you in on a secret: one of the reasons they’re easier to deal with than other demons lies in their origin.
They live in the deep seas of the Demon Realm, so if there’s no water, they can’t use their full power even back home.
Indeed, the ones who popped out were scowling, looking uncomfortable despite the humid summer weather.
“Ah, there he is.”
“This place sucks. Let’s just grab him and go back quickly.”
“Don’t let your guard down. That’s the contractor who made a deal with the Crow.”
The fish bastards were blathering about something, but it wasn’t particularly important.
The truth is, I have a very fair disposition.
Meaning, I’m not the kind of ill-mannered person who would start a fight while they’re at a disadvantage due to the lack of water.
The moment they approached me with snickers, I gave the signal. Droplets of water began to pitter-patter down from the sky.
At first, their expressions brightened, thinking it was just a timely rain. But as they realized what was actually falling from the sky, their faces began to rot with horror, and a smile spread across my lips.
“Th-This is…!”
“Aaaargh!!! It stings…!!!!”
“Nice! It’s working! Pour it all out…!”
The water, which had been falling in scattered drops, turned into a literal waterfall the moment my friends smashed the containers upon my signal. Seeing this, the demons began to writhe in what must have been pure joy.
I mean, I’m giving fish water. How happy they must be.
Of course, the “water” in question was top-grade holy water.
And now.
I planned to shave off some of my life force to improve the “water quality” even further.
“Don’t bother running. Your master isn’t going to tell you to come back anyway.”
It would be one thing if she told them to get out and drain the holy water quickly.
But as for these small fry, I just wanted them to disappear.
The light of Reinforcement, which upgrades everything at the cost of life, infused the holy water, and the screams of demons echoed through the area.
Since I wasn’t at the other locations, they wouldn’t be quite this intense, but they should still be seeing the effects of the holy water.
I did make a ‘small’ donation to the church this time, after all.
* * *
And that prediction turned out to be exactly right.
“Hmm, I wondered what was going on since our masked business partner contacted us after so long, but to ask for help catching demons… Cho-hong, what do you think?”
“He said we could keep all the demons we catch, right? Isn’t that a pretty good deal?”
“It’s not just good; it’s so good it’s almost a problem. It’s not like we have to exert ourselves much when he provided all this holy water.”
Kalia, the Chairman of Arcadia, smiled as she watched the demons suffering in the holy water.
Right now, they were flopping around like fish, but demons who had released their true forms were usually neither easy to hunt nor easy to capture.
“And Tae-ho, who’s been sulking lately because things have been too quiet, looks like he’s in a good mood.”
“Hey, who said I was sulking?!”
In one part of the battlefield, the demons who had barely managed to escape the holy water were immediately met with their second trial.
War Demon Seo Tae-ho.
The S-rank villain and Arcadia’s vanguard captain was waiting for them with his heavy fists.
“Alright, you bastards! Don’t just mope around, let’s go!”
He was intentionally giving the demons time to fix their posture before blowing their heads off one by one as they charged. Of course, a demon doesn’t die just because its head is blown off.
It was a part that took time to regenerate, but it meant they could eventually recover as long as they had enough time.
Now, then.
If you were to ask if the War Demon, a specialist in combat, failed to notice this, the answer would be no.
The reason he kept blowing their heads off despite knowing they wouldn’t die was quite simple.
“These guys are weak, but they’re tough enough to be fun to hit. Now! If you can’t get past me, don’t expect a single one of you to leave alive…!”
Like the crazed battle maniac he was, he was doing it just to enjoy the fight for as long as possible.
“Ugh, he probably already knows where their cores are by now. Unnie, say something to him.”
“Cho-hong, Tae-ho’s been behaving himself lately, so let’s let it slide for a day. Besides, it’s better than what Abel’s doing, right?”
On the opposite side of the War Demon.
“Seriously, you have to give me overtime pay. What kind of organization makes their informant fight…? I’m going to report this to the Labor Board.”
While the War Demon was dragging out the fight to humiliate the demons, the boy named Abel wasn’t “fighting” at all.
He simply watched the demons floundering in the holy water, and the moment he reached a conclusion, he used a holy-attribute artifact to snipe their weaknesses and kill them.
He even kept as much distance as possible in case they resisted, picking them off with a bow—which earned him low points for style.
“…He’s uncool in his own way, but I guess he’s still better than Seo Tae-ho.”
“Well, since his talent lets him see weaknesses, I suppose he doesn’t feel like fighting properly.”
As they watched the situation with smirks, a massive demonic energy surged from the magic circle, and the demons began to regain their strength.
It seemed a named demon—different from the small fry that had appeared so far—was about to emerge. At this point, Kalia finally stood up for the first time.
Abel would say he didn’t want to get close, and if she left it to Tae-ho, he would definitely drag it out to “have some fun.”
“Oh? I could do it, but are you going yourself, Unnie?”
“Yes, Cho-hong. I need to do this once in a while to keep my senses sharp.”
What crawled out of the magic circle was a massive demon shaped like a crocodile.
“I am…!”
And a few seconds before he could introduce himself in a booming voice.
Kalia raised a toy water gun and activated her talent with a playful smile.
Alchemy.
The talent that earned her the title of Alchemist of Omnipotence, a Fragment of Omnipotence, began to shine at her fingertips.
The materials were the holy water scattered around, a few holy-attribute artifacts, and the core component: the toy water gun.
“Now then, what shall today’s toy be~?”
On the surface, her attitude seemed playful, but Cho-hong, who was watching the manipulation from right beside her, couldn’t take her eyes off the scene.
The sight of her proud leader using alchemy was always the height of beauty.
Through a meticulous manipulation of mana that a commoner could never hope to understand, the materials were decomposed, parts that originally served completely different roles were connected, and they were reborn as something new. It was a scene that always evoked wonder, like a magic trick.
What appeared was a pure white water gun.
However.
“Since I made it as a one-time use, the power should be sufficient, right?”
The moment she pulled the trigger of the pistol-shaped toy, the purity and power of the holy water that erupted was definitely not the kind of firepower one would expect from a water gun.
With a thunderous boom, the transparent stream of water shot out and pierced the crocodile’s head.
Even though his core hadn’t been hit, the crocodile, who hadn’t even finished introducing himself, melted away and met his end.
“Hmm, nice and clean.”
“Ah, I thought someone worth fighting finally showed up! How could you do this?!”
“Hey! Don’t talk back to Unnie!”
Kalia smiled slightly at her still-childish comrades and muttered.
“Now, I wonder if our business partner will be pleased with this.”
* * *
And on another battlefield, a man was facing off against demons alongside several heroes.
However, at this moment, if you were to ask which side on this battlefield shared more similar thoughts, most would probably judge that the demons and the heroes were thinking the same thing.
A muscular, handsome man with a bare chest shouted.
“These are vegetables washed in holy water! Overcoming what you hate is an act of courage! I shall help you!”
“Fuck, it’s not that I hate them, I can’t eat holy water!”
A carrot drenched in holy water was shoved into the mouth of the screaming demon. The demon struggled for a moment before dissolving into nothingness.
“…How sad. That’s already the seventeenth one. Why can no one overcome their picky eating? With the help of my vegetables, they should be quite palatable.”
That was to be expected. Whether demon or human, no one could empathize with a psychopath who carried vegetables onto a battlefield to shove them into their opponent’s mouth.
“But I shall not give up! There are still so many of you! I believe at least one of you will overcome your picky eating! What is your favorite vegetable?! Carrots? Eggplants? Cucumbers? Or perhaps you prefer fruit?!”
“Aaaargh!!! Stop talking bullshit!!!!”
One of the demons, unable to take it anymore, lunged with a trident toward freedom, but the man blocked the trident as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“I see you’re using a fork, so you must like tomatoes?”
With a tomato, no less.
“Tomatoes are good. The flesh of a well-ripened tomato has a higher sugar content than you’d think, so they’re delicious even with a sprinkle of salt. And if you really can’t eat them, they’re great preserved in sugar.”
“What kind of nonsense is this…!!!!”
“Now, you will soon find the firm texture of this tomato, scrubbed clean with holy water, irresistibly delicious…!!!!”
The demon, who had been caught while trying to flee and had a tomato shoved into its mouth, thought as it dissolved:
I don’t know if this is the toughest battlefield among the seven, but it is definitely the most insane.