The Escape
Forged through a meticulous sequence of multiple artifacts, this decisive strike packed an overwhelmingly devastating punch.
A catastrophic white sphere of divine power expanded without pause, swallowing the desolate Wasteland and purging every speck of impurity from existence. Blinding radiance filled the horizon, and heat intense enough to sting the skin even from this immense distance scorched the earth black and flash-vaporized the clouds in the sky. Not even a High Demon could have hoped to survive at the epicenter of that blazing white sun.
Urtega, ever perceptive, had already slipped outside the blast radius in the nick of time. That was only possible because the strike, imbued with a curse via the Mirror of Grudge, was calibrated exclusively to hunt down the Demon King and detonate directly upon her.
Overwhelmed by such sublime, terrifying majesty, the soldiers and priests of the Church completely froze.
"What in the world is that…?"
"Heavens above…!"
"Good goddess, is that truly the power of holy arts…?"
"Even with ancient relics, this is simply unthinkable…"
Their dazed awe grated on my nerves. Did these idiots honestly think they came out here for a casual picnic? How could they lose their edge at a time like this?
"What are you all standing around for?! Get your defenses up right this damn second!"
"Pardon? What do you mean—"
Cecilia turned to me with a baffled look, my hand gripping her shoulder, but her question was cut short.
Tearing straight through the dense, blinding sphere of white, a lance of dark crimson energy surged out—aiming dead center at Cecilia.
"Tsk…!"
The sole saving grace was that it wasn't an Authority, merely a standard basic strike. The problem, however, was that it was a Demon King's basic strike. To anyone below the realm of a Sword Master or a 2nd-Class Archmage, it was nothing short of an instantaneous death sentence.
The protective barriers previously erected by the Church troops shattered like cheap glass, the brittle ringing screeching against my eardrums. At this rate, the Saintess was going to die.
I couldn't afford to lose her here. Losing her would be a catastrophic blow, both to our survival right now and to everything waiting in the future. No matter what happened, I had to keep her alive!
Adrenaline pushed my concentration past its limits, slowing my perception of time to an agonizing crawl as I desperately reviewed every defensive card in my arsenal.
The Absolute Ring set was useless; its invulnerability only worked on the very first strike of an engagement. The Sheath of Time was locked on cooldown, capable of holding only holy energy for the moment. The Urn of Time and the Explosive Glove offered zero defensive utility. As for the Mirror of Grudge, it had burned through every last one of its Grudge Stacks and was currently no better than an ordinary piece of decorative glass.
There wasn't enough time to pull another artifact from my pouch. Defense was impossible. That left only one option: evasion.
"Dammit!"
"Eek?!"
I threw the entirety of my weight into shoving Cecilia out of the way. With this body's pathetic physical strength, I couldn't launch her clear through the air, but I did manage to tackle her to the ground—barely slipping beneath the path of the beam. It was a razor-thin escape, practically a miracle.
Yet miracles never come cheap.
My outstretched left arm was caught directly in the wake of the dark crimson blast.
"You…!?"
"Lord Alzen!"
"Master Alzen?!"
As I tumbled hard across the dirt, Cecilia, Muriel, Rebecca, and Cacciola rushed over with pale, frantic faces, frantically reaching to inspect my condition. Honestly, there wasn't much to inspect. Below my left shoulder, my entire arm had been cleanly vaporized into nothingness.
"Ugh…!"
The sudden, massive blood loss triggered a violent wave of vertigo that made the world spin, but I ground my teeth and forced myself upright.
"Don't move! I-I'll heal you right away…!"
"I told you, Cecilia," I snapped, seizing her wrist with my remaining hand and yanking it down hard. "Don't you dare waste your holy power."
"What…?! How can you say that in a state like this?! Stop acting so reckless! If I don't treat this right now, you could die—"
"The only one who needs to stop being reckless is you, Cecilia. Your job right now is to kill the Demon King. We don't have the luxury to care about trivial collateral damage."
I bared my teeth and snarled into her face. Her complexion drained of all color.
"B-But still… you'll…"
"Die? So what if I do?"
"What…?"
Her eyes went wide with pure horror.
"What does it matter if I die?! We can kill a Demon King! Right here, right now, we can put that bastard in the ground!"
Another dizzying wave crashed against my skull, threatening to knock me out cold, but I gnashed my teeth and shoved her back toward the lines.
"Ah…!"
"Shut your mouth and prepare another holy strike. Huff… Muriel. Give me a potion."
"Here, my Lord."
Just as I popped the cork to down the flask, Muriel hesitated, her voice trembling slightly as she forced the words out. "Lord Alzen. Even so… you truly must receive the Saintess's healing…"
"Shut up, Muriel."
"…Yes, Lord Alzen."
When Muriel backed away with a resigned bow of her head, Rebecca stepped forward, her face twisting in anguish as if she couldn't bear to remain silent. But Muriel caught her arm and held her back.
"…Why are you stopping me?!" Rebecca hissed.
"Rebecca, follow Lord Alzen's will. He will not listen to a single word right now."
"So we're just supposed to leave him like this?! A wound like that can't be fixed with a common potion! If the Saintess acts now, she could restore his arm…!"
"I know. Believe me, I know."
"You…"
I barely registered their muffled, distant bickering through the haze of blood loss. Tilting my head back, I downed the potion in a single gulp.
"Phew…"
The bleeding instantly cauterized, and clarity returned to my mind. Along with it came a grim realization.
"…Goddammit. The shock completely sobered me up. Muriel. Liquor."
"……"
"Muriel. Don't make me repeat myself."
"…It is so painfully agonizing to watch you, Lord Alzen."
Her quiet, resigned sigh burrowed straight into my chest. Even so, she dutifully handed me a bottle. I uncorked it with my teeth, took a massive swig, and swayed on my feet until I found my balance.
When I lifted my head, Cecilia was staring at me, her large eyes swimming with unshed tears.
"What are you staring at? Hurry up and prepare an offensive holy spell."
"Why… why do you go so far…?"
"On the flip side, why the hell aren't the rest of you going this far?"
"……"
Her mouth clamped shut.
I let out a ragged sigh. What was I doing, taking it out on a naive kid who knew nothing of the world?
"Whatever. Just hurry up and prep the spell. My old man's gonna get himself killed at this rate."
Out on the Wasteland where the white sphere had collapsed, a ferocious clash was unfolding once again. Despite sustaining far more visible damage, the Demon King was still pressing Urtega backward. Even with the home-turf advantage of the Divine Realm, Church sanctuary fields, layers of blessings, and our long-range bombardments, it wasn't enough.
…Well, of course it wasn't. Cold logic dictated that this was the natural outcome. In the original scenario, a Demon King was a catastrophic raid boss that required a strike force of at least seven men on Urtega's level ganging up together just to scrape out a narrow victory.
"…Damn it all."
Anxiety gnawed at my insides. If we failed to slay the Demon King here, this would turn into the absolute worst disaster imaginable—far worse than never starting this ambush in the first place. Not only would we have exposed all our hidden trump cards to the Demon Realm, but once the high-ranking demons learned their sovereign had been targeted, they would wage all-out war in a frenzied retaliation.
No matter the cost, we had to slice away the Demon Realm's greatest pillar of strength right here, right now.
"…The holy invocation is complete."
Snapping back to reality at the sound of Cecilia's low, subdued voice, I raised the Sheath of Time.
"Fire it. Or do you want me to force your hand like last time?"
"…Grr!"
Cecilia ground her molars together, a venomous, desperate glint finally igniting within her eyes. A smirk pulled at the corner of my lips. Yeah, that's it. That's the spirit. If you're going to become the hero destined to save humanity, you damn well better have that much bite.
A roaring bolt of white lightning—distinctly fiercer and more potent than before—sucked into the mouth of the Sheath of Time. The subsequent process went exactly as rehearsed. The Urn of Time condensed the raw holy energy into a physical blade; I brushed it with the Explosive Glove to prime it with catastrophic elemental power, and then fed it into the Mirror of Grudge.
Earlier, the Mirror couldn't reflect the Demon King's basic attack because I had no Grudge Stacks. But now, with my left arm completely severed, I had accumulated a staggering surplus of agony and damage. The Grudge Stacks were practically overflowing.
It wasn't a deliberate sacrifice, but the tactical outcome was ideal.
Imbued with the unavoidable, unblockable nature of a conceptual curse, the luminous blade shot forward like an executioner's scythe, homing directly toward the Demon King. In that brief, fleeting instant, it seemed as if she looked back over her shoulder from afar, her expression twisting into one of genuine distress.
Once again, an incandescent white sphere engulfed the Wasteland.
"Erect all barriers!"
"Brace for retaliation!"
"Deploy your artifacts! Conserve as much holy energy as you can for the next barrage!"
Fortunately, the Church soldiers weren't entirely braindead. Rather than standing transfixed by the expanding hemisphere of destruction like last time, they mobilized instantly, weaving several overlapping layers of sacred warding.
Yet the expected counterattack never came. Was Urtega tying her down too tightly for her to retaliate?
Just as an uneasy foreboding began to settle over my gut, the white light dissipated, revealing the Demon King once more.
Her condition was horrifying. One of her horns had melted away entirely; more than half her torso was gouged out, as if vaporized into ash. The places where her arms should have been were empty, torn sockets, one of her legs was gone, and thick crimson blood poured freely onto the scorched dirt. Even at this distance where fine details blurred, it was undeniably clear: she was hanging on the very precipice of death.
My heart thudded against my ribs like a war drum. A sharp shiver raced up my spine, electrifying my brain.
"Heh… haha…"
We could kill her. We could actually do it. Before the original storyline even kicked off, we had the chance to wipe a Demon King off the board.
Hope swelled in my chest. If we took down one of the three Demon Kings right here, the road to the true ending would be blasted wide open. If only we could finish her…!
"…Wait, what?"
Hovering high in the air, the Demon King suddenly raised an arm—one that had somehow already regenerated—and waved it casually. Although the distance prevented me from making out her facial features, I could feel it deep in my bones: she was smiling at us.
"Don't tell me that bastard is…?!"
That jaunty, mocking wave was unmistakably conveying a single message: See you next time. The sheer horror of having victory snatched away at the final threshold made the blood drain entirely from my face.
"No… Don't you dare run. Don't you dare run away…!"
Realizing her intent, Urtega unleashed an invisible Mind Sword through empty space, desperate to sever her existence entirely.
Yet in the very next breath, she was simply gone—vanished without leaving behind a whisper of her presence.
A beat too late, the colossal Mana Wave Blockers that had been driven into the perimeter to prevent dimensional flight violently shattered, their wreckage trembling against the earth.
"……"
An utterly hollow, empty conclusion. My spirit felt like a rudderless rowboat adrift on a vast, barren ocean.
"Ha…"
All strength left my limbs, and I crumpled onto the dry dirt.
Was hunting a Demon King truly impossible at this stage? Deep down, I had known it. I had known it all along… but still… If only we had maintained the holy barrier… No, if we had maintained the barrier, our holy reserves would have been depleted, and we wouldn't have been able to cast the offensive holy spells in the first place. Even after just two barrages, most of the Church troops were practically half-dead. Maintaining a dimensional lockdown while firing catastrophic artillery was fundamentally impossible.
"Phew… Fuck."
As the venomous curse slipped past my lips, a shadow fell over me. Urtega was standing there, gazing down with a grim look. Naturally, he was far from unscathed; his body was carved with hideous gouges, and fresh blood trickled steadily from his nose and lips, speaking to severe internal injuries.
Even so, the scalding bitterness welling up inside me was too overwhelming to contain. I bared my teeth and sneered at him.
"Must feel fantastic, Father. Did fighting a Demon King to your heart's content finally satisfy you?"
"……"
"Aren't you even a little ashamed? I honestly never imagined you'd show your face so brazenly. Your skin must be thicker than the castle ramparts."
"……"
He offered no defense, choosing total silence instead. Staring at that stoic, emotionless expression only stoked the crimson fury boiling inside me.
"I'm not sure if you realize this, but you lost. It wasn't a draw; it was a clear, humiliating defeat. Do you know why? Don't tell me you can't figure it out. The Demon King walked straight into the Divine Realm on her own feet and weakened herself; I deflected her lethal blows twice; and our combined artillery tore her to pieces with two maximum-output strikes. Yet despite having a dying creature handed to you on a silver platter, you let her slip through your fingers! If that isn't a defeat, what the hell is?!"
"……"
"Sir Stanashila Aljen. That is quite enough."
Unable to watch any longer, the Pope stepped in to intervene, but by then, raw rage had completely devoured my rationality. Surging up from the ground, I grabbed Urtega by the collar with my remaining hand.
"The continent's greatest warrior?! You clawed your way up to the supreme realm of a Demi-God, yet you couldn't finish off a Demon King who was already half in the grave?! You let her escape?! Why?! Just tell me why!"
"…I am sorry."
"Ha! Is that all you have to say?! Oh, wonderful! Since the almighty, untouchable Urtega bestowed an apology, I suppose I have no choice but to forgive you! Isn't that right?! You goddamn—"
"Stop it right now!"
A shrill, tearful scream sliced through my tirade. A sudden weight latched around my waist, and when I looked down, Cecilia was clinging to me with all her might, glaring up through reddened eyes.
"If there is blame to be had, it falls on all of us! We didn't have enough time! We lacked preparation, we didn't know how to fight a Demon King, and our resolve wasn't strong enough! I'm frustrated too! I'm furious at my own foolishness and complacency!"
"……"
"So shoving all the blame onto a single person is wrong!"
Fat tears brimmed in her wide eyes before spilling down her cheeks in heavy streaks.
"Haa…"
I could have argued back. I could have torn her logic to shreds, but all that would earn me was watching Cecilia cry harder. What was the point? When I took a step back and looked at myself coldly, I was just throwing a pathetic tantrum.
Lifting the bottle to my lips, I swallowed a long draught of alcohol and slumped back down onto the earth.
"Sniffle… Stay still. I'm going to heal your arm… I'm allowed to do that now, right?"
"Why ask something so obvious?"
"Because you kept stopping me, you idiot!" she shrieked right into my ear, loud enough to make my skull ring.
"…I'm not apologizing."
"Hmph! As if I ever expected one from you?!"
A brilliant, soothing wave of holy power blossomed from her fingertips, sinking deep into my severed left shoulder.
Flesh and sinew began to knit together in a smooth, quiet rhythm. There was no pain. However, there was a very glaring, undeniable problem.
"Haa… What the fuck is this now…?"
The arm that regenerated wasn't human.
The fingers were unnervingly long and thick, ending in broad, terrifying claws. The palm was dyed an ominous, pitch-black hue, and dense patches of coarse scales and dark feathers sprouted along the skin, covering corded, bulging muscle that radiated raw, monstrous vitality.
It was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a demon's arm.
And etched directly into the center of the dark flesh, an ominous brand left behind by the Demon King flared with wicked luminescence, proudly asserting its sinister dominion.