Chapter 28: What on Earth Is Wrong With That Kid? (1)

"Ddu-ttatta! (Damn it, you perverted freaks!)"

Isaac was cursing up a storm in the language of babbling infants.

Watching the Saintesses, he'd always thought they seemed perverted—perverted through and through—but he'd never imagined the clergy were degenerate bastards to this degree!

'And they plan on holding the Doljabi in a place like this?'

Being the Demon King, Isaac could see through every trap the treasury held. With just a little concentration, he could roughly sense which wards had been laid where.

And at this point, this wasn't a treasury—it was a prison. A torture chamber!

Sure enough, screams were ringing out from all over.

"Aagh! Save me!"

"Mommeeee!"

"I'm sorry! I was wrong!"

Tsk. Tormenting children like this. Clergy really were hopeless, just as he'd always thought.

The fact that all of this was actually happening because Isaac himself had wandered into a restricted zone? The Demon King couldn't possibly have known such a thing.

And so Isaac sprinted at full tilt toward the Second Hall.

He had good reason to. Though still faint, he could clearly feel it—a trace of his old body's aura, far in the distance!

His dearly, tenderly raised flesh was beckoning him to come!

"Tta-tta-tta-tta-tta-tta!"

Of course, the children chasing after him were having complete meltdowns because of it.

"What the hell?"

"How is that kid finding the correct path?!"

The Saint candidates were losing their minds.

They'd been stunned once by the First Hall's near-wilderness landscape, and stunned a second time by its utterly merciless traps. The traps, in particular, which seemed to treat them like common thieves, left them privately reeling.

'I see! So this is the training that makes the Saintesses so strong...!!'

'Even the Doljabi is live combat?! No other faith comes close!'

'As expected of House Eshua. They're on another level.'

In reality, all that had happened was that House Eshua's youngest had switched on the anti-theft traps.

And that the Elder and Elder Council members who'd gone in to switch those traps off had, ironically, vanished without a trace.

Regardless, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠difficulty had skyrocketed. But these were all children who spoke of the Saint with reverence—exhausted as they were to the point of death, they were hardly the kind of talent that would be weeded out.

Living vines, exploding pollen, man-eating beasts—the traps they could somehow hack their way through.

The problem was the trial itself.

The First Hall was called the Hall of Choice, but it might as well have been the Hall of Blanks. On a road with only a single path, where choice was somehow mandatory, even walking one stepping stone was agony.

Every foothold was itself a chain of choices.

They had to distinguish safe platforms from unsafe ones to cross, and even the vines hanging by the river had to be carefully picked through.

Of course, it wasn't simply ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a test of luck.

'It's testing the Saint's discernment, isn't it.'

A Saintess or Saint was an agent of god.

In a word: when demons or disasters struck, they were the ones who led the people from the very front line.

If you couldn't even pick out a safe route, you had no right to call yourself a guide. In other words, the trial itself was god's examination.

But traps and trials like these weren't easy even for high-ranking priests.

The candidates ordered to eliminate Isaac couldn't even afford to chase him.

'Damn it, we'll be dead before we can even deal with the Eshua brat!'

The ones actually tailing Isaac were doubting their own eyes.

"He crossed here?"

"Impossible...!"

It looked like an ordinary garden at a glance, but eight transparent glass panels stretched across it in a grid, eight wide and eight deep.

A space like a chessboard.

Beneath the fragile-looking, multicolored glass panels flowed a river that seemed impossibly deep.

Cross these panels, and the Second Hall awaited. All of the First Hall's treasures were stored just in front of the Second Hall's door—every hall's treasures were arranged that way.

Meaning anyone not intending to press on to the Third Hall simply had to pick a treasure there and walk out. Easy.

Yes, very easy.

The only problem was having no clue which panel was the correct one. Damn it all.

"Damn it! If a kid could do it, why can't we?"

"It's a chessboard, isn't it? Maybe it's about how a specific piece moves?"

"Could be evens or odds."

"Ugh, come on—it's a discernment test, right? Then can't we just pick whatever looks safe?"

One boy stepped boldly onto a glass panel.

"This one's not cracked, so—AAAGH!!"

And he plunged down with equal boldness.

Several more tried after him. All failed. Eventually, the boys who'd been ordered to knock Isaac out of the running clutched their foreheads.

"Hey! Forget it—just use a tracking divine art! Find where that brat stepped!"

"What? Without choosing for ourselves? But this is still a legitimate test of discernment—!"

"He's right. If we can't even manage this, what Saint's pride would we have left...!"

"Screw pride! If the results are bad, who's going to care whether we followed the rules? Look over there! Shuri's already in second place just because he stuck to Isaac like glue!"

"!!"

The young Saint candidates looked up at Isaac and Shuri, climbing a distant hill.

The Second Hall's door was within arm's reach.

"Shuri knows what he's doing. Whatever the process looks like, all he has to do is reach the Third Hall and grab something good! Honestly, Shuri's the clever one here."

"Oh... you're right!"

"Look at that determination. He's chasing that brat at a completely impossible pace. That's the kind of resolve you need to become a Saint."

The children marveled. But the truth was different.

'Son of a... let... go...'

Shuri was staring at the sky.

The sky was blurry.

Or rather, he couldn't tell whether the sky was blurry or his vision was, but either way—blurry.

This wasn't exactly being dragged to a slaughterhouse, but.

Shuri was, in fact, simply being dragged along by Isaac.

As evidence: an invisible force was hauling him across the ground.

[Ahahahaha, my power is boiling over!]

Whisper.

Having absorbed the mana core in the annex and climbed a rank, Whisper positively radiated vitality.

He'd even changed appearance slightly. Where once he'd been a faceless black ghost, he now had a tail—that wispy, smoke-like tail was wound around Shuri, dragging him along.

'Damn it. It's not like this is some fated bond or anything.'

Since Whisper was invisible to him, Shuri could do nothing but swallow his tears.

How this milk-drinking monster managed to drag him around didn't matter anymore. Even if he figured out the method, it wasn't like he could escape.

But there was one thing he couldn't help wondering about.

No—he didn't want to find it strange, but it was strange, unavoidably so.

'How is this lunatic dodging every single trap?'

Did he know the answers somehow?

Well. Did it matter?

By now the other children must have realized Isaac knew the right path. They'd have figured out this was no time for pride.

As proof, even his rivals seemed to be following only the trail Isaac had taken, so they'd catch up in no tim—

BOOM!!!

"AAAAH!"

"Save us!"

"...?!"

Catch up, my ass!

The children following Isaac's trail had been caught in an explosion.

Smoke billowing skyward, children screaming—Shuri's face went white.

No, what the hell! What was that?

That's not a trap, is it?! One look and you could tell that was a spell-made explosion!

Shuri turned his trembling pupils toward Isaac.

And sure enough, there Isaac was, sucking on his rattle and giggling like a pervert.

"Ttya-tta-dduddya! (Stinky little chick priests. Did you really think you could covet what belongs to me?)"

Isaac cackled away.

As the saying goes, a king of beasts gives his all even when hunting chicks.

Little as they were, those brats were the fearsome elite... no, the priests, dispatched by their respective houses.

Naturally, he'd anticipated pursuit and planted bomb magic on his own footprints—hidden within holy power, no less.

'Did they think I wouldn't notice them trying to eliminate me? A thousand years too early.'

Isaac had deliberately wiped out everyone gunning for him in one sweep. Interference was best dealt with in the First Hall.

Not that it was much of a "bomb"—barely a 1st Tier spell.

Nobody would die from it.

'Still, I didn't expect not a single one of them to find the correct answer.'

It wasn't as if his route was the only correct path. Stepping on landmines anyway meant... well, that was on them.

And honestly, he understood. This was a space where even high-ranking knights got lost if they didn't grasp the principle.

So had Isaac divined the correct path through magic?

No. Not remotely.

The way through was simple, no fancy methods required.

After all, hadn't the Elder given the candidates a hint before they entered the treasury?

Those words carried only one meaning.

'Act as a Saintess. Act as a Saint.'

And the way to clear the First Hall under that condition?

Most people would think this:

It's a trial to find the safe path as a guide for humanity!

Wrong.

The right path? The safe path? Don't make him laugh!

Anyone past a certain level could identify those naturally through sheer knowledge. And besides, that sort of thing was far better left to the veterans in the field in the first place.

So what did the trial actually demand?

'Humans instinctively choose what looks safe and good.'

But a Saintess must not.

The survival instinct is a perfectly natural human desire—and at the same time, an utterly selfish one.

Yet a Saint is an agent of god, denied even that most natural of desires. On a road you know leads to death—could you choose it, proudly, with your head held high?

In a word, the First Hall was a trial hall that tested that very fear.

The rope that looked ready to snap. The path that looked lethal to any observer. You simply had to choose the thing that looked the most ominous, the most doomed.

That was the First Hall's true answer.

'Well, knowing it in your head doesn't make grabbing a rotten rope any easier, I'll admit.'

That was why Isaac was actually in a foul mood.

This was a treasury built by the gods, after all. Didn't it feel exactly like them brainwashing people into believing this is what a Saint must be?

'So I'll smash every last bit of it.'

And as for why he'd brought Shuri along—well, because even so, there were times you might fail...

BOOM!!

"AAAGH!"

...as a shield. That's all.

Isaac used Shuri as a stepping stone on the final path of choice and landed neatly on solid ground.

Shuri, caught in the blast, groaned on the ground.

"You—this is really—!"

Isaac patted Shuri's shoulder as if to say good work.

Truly the bloodline of the Saintess's house. Blessed bodies really weren't for nothing—the little dragon-lizard was all bone and resilience.

"Ttaya-ttata! (Good work, Bung-Bung! In exchange for coming along, I'll let you snag at least one nice thing for yourself)!"

Isaac spared not a single glance for the First Hall's treasures and headed straight for the Second Hall's door.

Dragged along behind him, Shuri's vision blurred with tears.

No, look. Fine—he'd grant that the Second and Third Halls' treasures beat the First Hall's.

But even amid all this, hadn't he just seen that little bastard sneak off something that looked like an elixir and gulp it down? And hadn't he seen him quietly stash the rest in his diaper?

Was he imagining it?

Was the Third Hall going to be like this too?

He didn't understand why his body felt tougher every time he got caught in a trap, but—was this really how it had to be?

"Ttaya-yaya! (Let's go)!"

"Go by yourself, damn it...!"

Meanwhile, elsewhere—

There was a group groaning in despair at the sight of the First Hall turned into a battlefield.

Kina Berith and his entourage.

They were still at the starting line.

The moment first and second place reached the Second Hall's door, anxious murmurs began to ripple through them.

"Is this all right? At this rate, Eshua—no, someone else—is going to snatch up both the Skeleton Demon King's remains and every good treasure!"

But Kina Berith clicked his tongue.

"Pathetic. You didn't stop to think that they sent the candidates ahead on purpose?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The First Hall is the Hall of Choice. Until information accumulates, your body suffers for it—that's inevitable. It's a waste of stamina."

"!"

But send your rivals ahead first, and every trap would have already sprung—revealing which path was the right one in no time.

"Scouting unfamiliar ground is work for meat shields. A foolish move."

"B-but... we're in last place...!"

"Have you forgotten who's guarding the door to the Second Hall?"

"!"

In an instant, their expressions changed.

As a son of the Papal line, Kina already knew the treasury's layout inside and out.

And sure enough—

"The Second Hall's entrance is guarded by an 8th Tier demon."

"Ah!"

"Everyone who left ahead of us will get bogged down there anyway, right?"

"Exactly. Half the field falling in the First Hall isn't just about the route. Well, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that's the odds on a good day—depending on circumstances, even the Saintesses..."

Then Kina Berith, spotting something, smiled.

A pillar of light was rising before the Second Hall's door.

And moments later, a massive monster took shape before it.

Huge—even visible at a glance from this distance.

His minions went pale with terror.

"I-is... isn't that a demon?"

Kina laughed lightly.

"Ah, Shuri is out of luck. If he'd stayed by my side, he'd have sailed through to the Second Hall. With that thing out, forget the Second Hall—he'll be lucky to escape with his life."

"Wouldn't that thing wreck every other house too?"

"Exactly. They're not Kina-nim, yet they dare speak of sainthood. I especially hope Isaac Eshua dies to that demon."

"Enough. That's vulgar."

So he said—but Kina knew better than anyone.

He was the only one here capable of dealing with that thing. He'd been taught divine arts by the Pope, his grandfather, until the man practically frothed at the mouth.

'If you think this is just a Doljabi, you're making a huge mistake.'

This was better understood as an invisible power struggle between the great houses.

His subordinates asked anxiously:

"Could the Eshua brat perhaps deal with it? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠They are an exorcist house."

"He can't. Why do you think it was placed there as the treasury's gatekeeper in the first place?"

Right. Everyone would simply have to wait for Kina to arrive.

No—in a sense, arriving slowly on purpose might make him look all the more heroic. He'd stroll in right about the time the other children realized their own incompetence and limits.

"So we can take it slow and—"

But at that moment—

CRASH!

The summoned demon fell over.

"..."

...Huh?

It fell? The 8th Tier demon?

Clunk! Screeeeech!

"Kina-nim. The Second Hall's door is opening."

Right, the Second Hall's door was open—

"..."

...Wait. The door is open?!