A Chaotic Entrance Ceremony (4)
That was close…
Blood gushed incessantly from my lips as a shiver racked my frame—trembling not from agony, but from the searing euphoria pulsing through my veins. A monstrous claw impaled my abdomen, gouging clean through my entire upper torso. Up until now, I had been putting on a show of being utterly overwhelmed. It would have looked suspicious if I suddenly deflected the High Demon's all-out strike with a pristine divine barrier, so I deliberately orchestrated the moment to appear as though I had barely intercepted the blow with my own flesh.
Even that had required compressing divine power directly against my skin in a desperate, makeshift barrier, forcing the lethal momentum to a halt through sheer, stubborn will.
My consciousness is slipping…
I had lost far too much blood. For an ordinary mortal, this was a wound fatal enough to cause instant death several times over.
I never dreamed things would spiral this out of hand…
As expected of the future Hero Party, despite being so green that even an intermediate demon should have pushed them to their limits, they had somehow managed to corner a High Demon, if only for a heartbeat. Of course, the demon had been severely depleted from sustaining both its isolation barrier and the dimensional portal tethered to the Demon Realm, which was the only reason they had caught it off guard. Still, forcing it to abandon the portal and its barrier just to unleash its true might was certainly worthy of praise.
What should I do…?
The euphoria blooming from the agonizing pain bordered on sheer ecstasy, but if I surrendered to the bliss and blacked out now, either Evan or Stella might end up dead. While I could easily resurrect them if they had only just expired, letting them die was never a wise gamble. Even if someone was brought back to life, crossing that threshold left deep psychological scars once they awoke.
In the game, reviving a party member mid-dungeon inflicted a severe trauma debuff that effectively locked them out of combat until the floor or chapter was cleared—a mechanic obviously designed for balance. But this was reality. I couldn't let them suffer through that.
Why on earth are they even here in the first place…?
The game's storyline clearly detailed why they ended up at this scene, so I thought heading off the trigger flags beforehand would keep them far away. Remembering all the grueling effort I went through yesterday just to avert this encounter, I felt thoroughly robbed.
I planned to play along for a bit, then vaporize this bastard on the spot with the Red Stone of the Radiant Sun…
Honestly, even without the relic, my divine reserves were absurdly overpowered for this early stage. I packed more than enough sacred power to put down a High Demon, even if it took a little sweat. In short, the very premise of me being brutally overwhelmed was completely fabricated. My entire script had gone catastrophically off the rails. If they realized I could effortlessly cleanse a High Demon using the Red Stone, suspicious misunderstandings about my abilities might take root. That was the last thing I wanted.
The best move I have left…
Is to make it look like I threw my body on the line deliberately, sacrificing myself to carve out an opening for them.
Perhaps stunned by my sudden intervention, the demon hadn't yet pulled back its impaling claw.
Now.
Channeling every shred of divine power left in my core, I clamped down tight around its arm. I poured every ounce of strength into anchoring myself to the flagstones, locking my body in place so even the beast's monstrous brute force couldn't tear its limb free. To sweeten the trap, I converted my divine energy into a caustic purification aura, seeping into its arm to wither its strength from the inside out.
Haaah…♡
Demonic energy clashed violently with the sacred power inside me, throwing a riot through my nerves. Sometime down the line, maybe I could catch a live demon and inject demonic energy into myself just for the high… Savoring the illicit little thrill gifted by this fiend, I pushed a strand of thought projection toward Evan.
“[He… ro…]”
The corrosive demonic energy made it difficult to project my thoughts cleanly.
Haah…
It annoyed me that I couldn't wallow in this sensory banquet any longer, but I had no choice. Savoring pain was fine and dandy, but avoiding suspicion was paramount if I wanted to continue my comfortable, blissful roleplay. And the foundational premise of this roleplay was defeating the Demon King and finding a way back home. Moments ago, I let myself get skewered simply because I intended to indulge in a bit of agony before annihilating the demon without a trace, but staying on this course would destroy all the careful setup I had cultivated so far.
If Evan or Stella died—especially Evan—it was game over. Even if I resurrected him, tending to his shattered psyche would make the rest of our journey an absolute nightmare. Therefore…
“[Quickly… please, sever the demon's arm with your Holy Sword…!]”
I'm spoon-feeding you the kill on a silver platter, so just swallow it, damn it…!
If he froze up and failed to move after I went to such absurd lengths, I was going to develop a burning hatred for him.
“……”
I couldn't hear his response.
Is it because of the demonic energy…?
Given the thick miasma gnawing away at my divine power, projecting my thoughts and discerning my surroundings were already straining my limits; failing to catch his mental voice wasn't surprising. Still, after years of living by telepathy, I could grasp the general contour of someone's thoughts simply from the shape of their mental ripples. In other words, I could read the raw emotional undertones radiating from Evan.
Panic, disbelief, harrowing shock, and bottomless despair.
Wait… you're not spacing out right now, are you…?
No! If you freeze here, everything goes down the drain!
I'm not going to die from something like this anyway, so could you please just lop off the damn arm impaling my stomach?! I can barely hold him in place much longer…!
You hopeless blockhead…!!
I could sympathize to a degree. Seeing a girl you were chatting with just yesterday standing before you covered in lacerations, drenched in blood, her torso gouged through with entrails practically spilling out—naturally, the psychological trauma would hit like a battering ram. The only reason I was staying so composed was that I was blind and only feeling the pain; if I had to look at my own gruesome state with my own eyes, even I might…
No, whatever!
You're going to be seeing me like this all the time from now on, so don't break down over a little flesh wound like this…!!
I wanted to scream that at him right then and there, but doing so would instantly shatter the pristine image I had spent so long cultivating. Besides, I didn't actually know the spoken language of this world, so yelling out loud would be gibberish to him anyway. Thus, all I could do was trust Evan. No, I had to trust him. If Evan didn't step up, salvaging this disastrous mess was out of the question.
So please, just do something!
I pleaded desperately within my heart.
Right at that moment—
Schk!
Yes…!
Had my desperate prayer reached the Hero? I felt the distinct, clean severing of the limb skewering my midsection. The moment the arm was cleaved from its source, the continuous feed of demonic energy into my flesh ceased. My internal divine power surged forward, rapidly purifying the lingering corruption and stabilizing my physical state. While my body was still a mangled wreck on death's door with no regeneration underway, my spatial awareness snapped back into clarity.
“Pant… pant…”
Evan heaved ragged breaths, completely drained as if severing an arm cloaked in a High Demon's dense miasma had demanded every ounce of his remaining stamina.
“My… my arm…! My arm…! How… how dare you… How dare youuuu!!”
The demon, entirely unhinged by the sheer indignity of having its limb lopped off by mere insects, began shrieking at the top of its lungs.
“Insolent vermin! How dare you! How daaaare youuuu!!”
Howling in fury, the beast gathered its black miasma into a swirling vortex.
“To hell with the mission! I will blast every last one of you to cinders!”
With a mad roar, the fiend mobilized every droplet of demonic power left in its frame, initiating a devastating spell aimed directly at Evan, who stood brandishing the glowing Holy Sword.
Wait, a spell?
No way…!
Normally, when a demon found an encounter troublesome, it cut its losses and fled! Why wasn't it running away?! Why the hell was it preparing a high-tier spell?! In sheer panic, I locked my divine awareness onto the demon's thought waves.
[Kill! Kill! I will slaughter you all! I will hound you to the depths of hell, rend flesh from bone, and drown your souls in eternal agony!!]
Its thoughts were consumed by pure, unadulterated venom—an all-consuming hatred set on wiping out Evan, myself, and this entire academy in one sweeping stroke.
Crazy bastard…!
It had completely snapped!
“Damn it, not on my watch!”
Evan raised the Holy Sword and lunged forward in desperation, but the chasm in power was still too vast. Unable to pierce the wall of demonic mana shielding the fiend, he was violently repelled and sent crashing backward.
W-Wait a second… I can't even move right now…?!
A chilling dread crawled over my skin. Even after being weakened by my divine power, the magical signature gathering around the fiend was unmistakably cataclysmic.
Stella—what happened to Stella?!
“[S-Sister Stella!!]”
I frantically projected my thoughts toward her. Yet what echoed back was:
[It's because of me… I… I did this to Aria… Right before my eyes, Aria… Ah, aah…]
Huh…?
Sensing the nature of the mental ripples returning from Stella, I froze solid on the spot. The shape of those thoughts was all too painfully familiar.
T-This is…?!
It was the exact thought pattern I encountered countless times back in the Demonic Realm: a complete mental breakdown brought on by severe psychological shock. For most people plunged into that state, time was the only cure.
I'm so screwed…!!
I played around way too much! If this kept up, not just this training ground, but this entire sector of the academy would be obliterated!
At this rate, I have no choice but to use the Red Stone of the Radiant Sun…
Could I play it off as a single-use sacred relic that contained immense divine energy, claiming I barely managed to slay the fiend by exhausting it…? Falsely claiming a reusable artifact was single-use meant I wouldn't be able to wield it openly in front of witnesses later, but to defuse this catastrophe, the Red Stone was my sole option.
Is there really no other way…?
Grimacing, I clasped the necklace in my hand and gathered my divine power.
Right at that moment—
A low, quiet voice resonated through the air like an inescapable shockwave.
In an instant, Evan—who was scrambling back toward the demon—froze mid-stride. The demon, mid-incantation, locked in place. And I, clutching the necklace to activate the Red Stone of the Radiant Sun, was paralyzed just as rigidly.
Within a world brought to a standstill, the sole moving figure walked into view, hands clasped casually behind her back—a young girl.
“Followed the ripples of mana to see what the fuss was about, and what do I find…”
Time itself hadn't truly ceased. The world outside continued to tick. Yet we were utterly immobilized, as if our very existence had been severed and cordoned off from reality.
T-This voice…
The adorable cadence of a petite young girl, speaking in the wizened, blunt tone of an ancient crone. There was no mistaking it.
“Stepped out for an errand, and some moth crawled straight into my parlor.”
The Archmage of Words, and the Headmaster of Arhen Academy.
A-Arhen Isis…!
Hope had finally arrived.