Master of the Demonic Sword (6)
"N-no... impossible..."
The scaled demonic human dragged himself across the ground with nothing but his upper body.
Everywhere on his body—including the stump where his lower half had been cleaved away—the marks of a one-sided beating were plainly written. Gone from his eyes was the fury of moments ago; nothing remained there now but terror.
"H-how could... someone like me...!"
"Ugh, so noisy."
Shlack!
The keen edge cleaved through the demon's neck. The severed head dropped with a dull thud and rolled twice forward before coming to rest.
"These things are all hopelessly full of themselves, every last one of them."
Kallen gave the twitching headless corpse a dismissive kick, muttering under his breath. "This body, I, myself... at the end of every sentence. Good grief."
Shaking his head, he turned his gaze back behind him.
Carol was sprawled over Yulian, laying him across her knees as she busied herself wiping the blood from his face and body.
"..."
Another strange expression flickered across Kallen's face at the sight.
At the sound of his approaching footsteps, Carol finally looked up.
"Stop sniveling and get up. It's dangerous here."
Carol flinched, then ducked her head and said quietly, "...Thank you for saving us."
"Save your thanks for Yulian."
Kallen looked down at the unconscious boy. "If he hadn't found his courage, everything would have been over before I ever got here."
"...I knew that already. You didn't have to tell me."
Carol snapped back as if he'd asked something absurd. Yet there was an unmistakable trace of dissatisfaction in the way her eyes lingered on him.
"The delinquent professor who bullied our Yulian and Miss Potts..."
"Tch. Can't exactly argue with the man who saved my life, can I."
Kallen flinched for a moment, clicked his tongue, and continued. "The exam is over. There should still be ferries left along the riverbank—take one and rejoin the others at the encampment."
"...What about you, Professor?"
"I've got bugs to squash."
At his indifferent answer, Carol hesitated, studying his face before venturing a question. "Have you by any chance seen Miss Potts?"
"...No, I haven't. She's probably somewhere deeper in the forest."
Kallen paused briefly, then shook his head.
Carol fumbled through her clothes and drew something out, holding it up to him. "...If you do find her, could you give her this for me?"
As he accepted the necklace—an old locket shaped like a locket pendant—her voice continued. "It's something she lost. I was going to return it to her myself, but..."
"Understood. If I find her, I'll make sure she gets it."
Kallen nodded. Carol, hoisting the groaning Yulian onto her back, bowed her head to him once more in thanks. Then she wheeled around and retraced her path at a brisk pace, vanishing into the trees.
Watching her go, Kallen let out a dry chuckle. "Well, brute strength is her specialty, at least."
Kallen pressed onward toward the heart of Alheim.
Scattered throughout the forest were remnants of iridescent, shimmering light, and his brow furrowed at the sight of them.
"Rifts..."
They were the traces of dimensional rifts that had opened and were now dissolving away.
It was not a good sign. That radiance meant that things belonging to the laws of another world—not the Material Realm—had already arrived in this forest in numbers.
"...So there was more than one or two of them. What in the world are they planning?"
At last, Kallen was on the verge of reaching the central spring.
But there, an enormous hemispherical membrane of opaque substance barred his way. Nothing of the interior could be seen, and no sound escaped from within. Its surface had hardened to such extreme density that forcing his way through looked no easy task.
Whatever was behind this whole affair, it was in there. "Please, just don't do anything stupid in there..."
Kallen murmured anxiously, picturing the platinum-haired girl whose face he still couldn't see.
"Do not interfere."
"Huh?"
He had been about to draw his sword and smash through the hardened membrane by force.
As if they had been hiding in the shadows all along, several demonic humans appeared in an instant and encircled him. Each one draped in grotesque tentacles and scales—they were clearly the highest-ranking demons the Caliburn Guard had warned about.
Without so much as a flicker of alarm, Kallen looked around at them and asked, "What's going on in there?"
"The Communion."
One of the demons answered in a voice like tearing cloth. "The sword has at last chosen its master. Soon a new Apostle shall awaken to lead us."
"...I get the general idea."
Showing no surprise whatsoever, Kallen raised his sword and settled into his stance.
At that, the demons surrounding him broke into open mockery. "What reckless audacity. Do you truly believe you can face all of us alone?"
"Sorry, but I'm rather short on time at the moment."
Kallen replied with perfect composure, waggling his fingers. "So let's hurry this along, shall we?"
"Gyaaaagh...!"
The demon, all four limbs severed, let out a beast-like shriek.
Ignoring it entirely, Kallen twisted the sword buried in its back, grinding its innards to pulp. The thinning scream cut off abruptly, and the creature's body went limp and crumpled to the ground.
"Whew."
Kallen idly pulled his blade free and surveyed his surroundings. The demons that had come at him so ferociously had been hacked into worthless scraps of corpse, none of them so much as twitching.
Sensing movement, he whipped around. A demon with one arm severed leaned against a tree, gasping for breath—then shuddered violently and shrieked in a voice thick with terror. "S-stay back, you monster...!"
Kallen simply kept walking forward, as though the words meant nothing at all.
"You're... you're a monster...!"
The demon conjured searing flame above its palm and hurled it in a last desperate gambit. Kallen split it apart with his sword—but at once a dark mist billowed out around him, shrouding his vision.
"Damn it, what a nuisance—huh?"
He frowned as he cut through the haze and leapt forward again.
The gasping demon was holding its own heart in its hand—it had torn it out of its own chest.
"...Hrk."
Even as it vomited blood, shimmering multicolored light bloomed around the creature and slowly began to swallow its body.
It's aiming for a self-ejection...?! Wait.
His legs wouldn't move. Kallen glanced down.
A magic circle—hidden by the dark mist moments ago—was now etched into the ground beneath him, glowing. Bound by it, his feet were rooted fast to the earth, utterly immobile.
Kallen looked back at the demon. Even as it faded from sight, blood pouring from it in torrents, the creature wore a vindictive smile.
"Let's go together, you bastard!!"
The next instant, something enormous—like a great tendril—erupted from the ground and wound tightly around his entire body.
"Wha—hold on...!!"
It all happened in the space of a heartbeat. Before Kallen could even react, he was dragged bodily through the rift.
"Damn it all."
The moment his eyes opened, the curses came pouring out on their own.
Before him stretched a sky so strangely close that the surfaces of distant stars were visible within it. Kallen stood in the middle of a forest drenched entirely in violet.
He understood instinctively where he was. "...The Illusion Realm, then."
As he staggered to his feet, his face was clouded with a throbbing headache.
"It seems there was nothing nearby, at least."
Had a mana beast native to this unfamiliar reaches of the Illusion Realm—or one of its restless spirits—caught him while he was unconscious, he might well have been torn apart, body and soul. For now, simply being alive was fortune enough.
Letting out a breath of relief as he glanced around, Kallen soon spotted it: an old sword driven upside-down into the ground right beside him.
"...Did you protect me, by any chance?"
A wry smile tugged at his lips. "Well, I suppose you need someone to swing you around, too."
Recovering the old sword, Kallen clicked his tongue in irritation. "Damn it. I strutting around acting all high and mighty in front of the kids, and now look at the mess I'm in."
Like the witches, a demon casting away its own life was an exceedingly rare occurrence. Even Kallen hadn't anticipated such a mutually destructive gambit.
"Somehow, I have to get a look inside that barrier..."
Impatience seeped back into Kallen's face—but the path home remained as murky as ever.
The Illusion Realm was an unknown dimension of boundless expanse, its ends beyond any reckoning. Worse still, its time and space were jumbled into utter chaos. In such a place, finding a way back to where one had started was all but impossible.
Even if he were extraordinarily lucky and managed to find a passage, there was no guarantee it would connect to where he'd originally come from. Decades might have passed on the other side—or he might be flung centuries into the past. There was no telling.
The only beings capable of navigating their way out of a place like this were archmages who had surpassed the limits of humanity, or a Saintess favored by Aten.
"Tch. I'd have felt better falling straight into the mouth of Hell."
Hell, which existed somewhere in the endless reaches of the Illusion Realm, was also the stronghold of the demons—humanity's sworn enemies. Kallen, in fact, had half a mind to head that way instead.
Of course, as always, God showed no intention of granting his wishes.
"So what do I do about this... huh?"
Kallen, sighing over and over, suddenly looked down. From within his coat came a faint clinking sound.
He reached in at once and drew the object out of his pocket. "This is..."
Garnet's old locket—the one the girl had asked him to deliver—was glowing faintly in his palm.
"..."
Curiosity seeping in, Kallen carefully opened the locket's cover.
Inside was a portrait depicting what looked to be a warm, loving family. And Kallen recognized at once the small platinum-haired girl painted between the man and woman who appeared to be her parents.
"...Garnet?"
Then his gaze shifted to the man beside her. He had hair the same color as Garnet's and wore a long mustache, caught mid-laugh in the portrait. "So this man would be... that traitor, Nigel."
His sharp eyes were identical to Garnet's, but for a traitor, his features were on the whole rather gentle and kind-looking.
"Huh?"
Only then noticing something, Kallen's eyes narrowed slightly.
The faint light emanating from the locket was pointing—eerie as a compass—relentlessly in one single direction.