What on Earth Is Wrong with That Kid? (2)

Shuri could not make sense of this situation.

A demon.

No—fine. Sure. Of course a demon is going to show up.

Uncle Rillai had warned them twice before they entered the treasury, after all.

Without a Chief Priest or a Cardinal present, that stage was already beyond anything a human could handle.

Of course, the demon kept here was one the divine faction had captured and confined. As long as you followed the rules, you wouldn't be hurt. Nothing would go wrong.

Right—as long as you followed the rules.

Shuri gripped Isaac tight, looking utterly unconvinced.

"Got it? From here on, you absolutely do not attack the opponent. It's an enemy, I know, but you cannot attack it!"

"Taya……?"

Isaac made a face like he'd just bitten into something rotten.

Is this kid insane?

It's an enemy. Why on earth wouldn't I attack it?

"That's the only way to survive and pass the Second Gate! Anyway, you just have to stay quiet in here! Whatever appears, you stay still until it's gone! You attack, and it is absolutely over!"

Isaac let out a hollow laugh.

He didn't know the details, but he could guess.

Ah, so fighting a demon directly would kill us, and they're substituting a test of nerve in its place. Makes sense.

Sure enough, Shuri seized Isaac with the grimmest expression he had ever worn on his face.

This accursed little brat is so unpredictable I can't even guess where he'll bolt next.

Frankly, he scares me more than the trial itself!

"Got it? Never, NEVER! No matter what shape the thing takes in front of you, no matter if it attacks first—do not touch it! You endure, no matter what! You only have to hold out for three minutes!"

Ugh, this kid is such a pain.

He's not even a baby anymore, doing all this—wait. No, he literally is a baby.

"If you lose your composure and attack it, an actual 8th-tier demon will appear! And then we're ALL dead!"

Hmm… for the Demon King, an 8th-tier demon isn't exactly adorable—more like a decently loyal guard dog. Hmm. Eh, fine, whatever.

The goal is the Skeleton Demon King's remains anyway.

"Got it? You absolutely cannot attack!"

Good grief, kid. You are relentless.

"Answer me that you've got it! If you can't hold out, we both die! People have actually died here!"

"Taya (understood)."

Such a little worrywart.

Only after wringing that promise out of him did Shuri push open the door to the Second Gate, relief flooding through him. The sealed doors answered with light and voice.

Isaac identified the nature of the spell from those few words alone.

As he'd expected—an illusion-based trial.

It would no doubt take the shape of whatever the examinee despised most, something crafted to shatter their composure.

They really went all out making it convincing, huh?

Testing fear in the First Gate, then composure in the Second.

'No wonder so many wash out. Kids can't stomach this stuff.'

But that only worked on children.

Did they honestly believe some cheap fake could fool an old-timer who'd been through every hell imaginable—down to the very bones?

A pillar of light descended before them. From within, the silhouette of a person emerged.

Just as expected, something in that figure made Shuri go pale. He clenched his teeth and held Isaac close.

"Right. Endure it! No matter what it says, you absolutely cannot attack! Endure it…!"

BANG!!!

Barely had he finished telling him to endure when the opponent went flying.

Along with an explosion…

A severed neck, torn apart without mercy…

Soaring into the sky…

"Agh!! You lunatic!!!"

Along with Shuri's scream, the pillar of light turned black. And what emerged from within it was an enormous monster!

"AAAAGH!"

Shuri stared, wide-eyed, at the flickering monster, and grabbed Isaac by the collar.

"You absolute madman! I TOLD you to endure!"

And he couldn't even manage that—he had to go and rip the illusion's head clean off?

"You—people's words actually get through to you! Because of you, we're all about to die to an 8th-tier demon!"

Yet Isaac, arm still outstretched, looked phenomenally displeased.

'Hey, nobody said the thing was going to shape-shift into a GOD, did they.'

Before Isaac's eyes lay a severed neck wearing the face of a god.

So the trial takes the form of whatever you hate most to break your composure, does it?

Goddammit.

Of all things to shapeshift into—the gods themselves?

"You, seriously! How could you not even last three seconds?!"

Three seconds?! I held out a LOT longer than that, didn't I?!

Did you not see whose face that was?!

But what was done was done.

KUGUGUNG!

As the golem-shaped monster thrashed about like a fish in water, Shuri squeezed his eyes shut.

'Damn it. It's over.'

He couldn't have faced his father like this.

The Skeleton Demon King's remains everyone coveted, the treasures of the Third Gate—all of it would go to Kina Berith now. And they would die here…

BANG!!

…they would die…?

Shuri found himself knocked flat on his rear.

"Aagh!"

Because right in front of his eyes was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the eye of a golem taller than he was.

The golem lay toppled, smashed to pieces.

'Th-that's impossible!'

"You can't bring down an 8th-tier demon unless it's Grandmother or Grandfather…!"

And on top of that, the gate had opened!

Yet Isaac, the one who'd obliterated the golem, looked downright foul-tempered.

Well, fine—smuggling a destruction spell through under the guise of a holy art and shattering the golem's magic core was all well and good. A cheap little puppet like that. All it took was knowing where the core sat.

But.

"Tayaaaaa (what do you mean, 8th-tieeeer)?"

Are you kidding me?

You're disrespecting the Demon King's guard dog right now?

How is THIS supposed to be an 8th-tier demon?

This thing was a puppet conjured by a demon's magic. The real problem lay with whoever had crafted it.

'That's my subordinate's spellcraft.'

The Skeleton Demon King had his closest confidants.

The strongest demons the divine faction trembled at the very name of, alongside the Skeleton King himself.

Anyway—this puppet was the signature ability of one of those fourteen.

But there was no way that man was lending his own power to the divine faction.

'Don't tell me… is he playing house pet for the Eshuas in there?'

No, impossible.

Each of the fourteen wielded power second only to the Demon King himself.

Granted, not this magnificent body of mine—those were the blockhead Demon Kings of the old days. Even so, that one would never be caught so easily as to fall into the divine faction's hands.

Then what—did he strut in of his own free will and end up as a doorman for priests?

If so, that made even less sense. Why would the Demon King's most loyal servant stoop to such a humiliating farce?

'Could it be connected to my own body, lying somewhere in here?'

He had no idea what had happened over the past 150 years—but that, he could simply verify on the spot.

If that demon really was serving as the Eshuas' lapdog, he would be somewhere in this treasury.

Which meant Isaac had every reason to meet him face to face.

Just as Isaac glanced toward the freshly opened gate—

"Ahahaha! The Eshua men finally prove useful for something!"

"!"

Children burst out of the brush.

"If it's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Eshuas, of course they'd know how to clear the gates!"

"How thoughtful—clearing the toughest gatekeeper for us in advance! Much appreciated!"

It was the Saint candidates who'd been trailing doggedly behind Isaac. They must have been hiding the entire time. Judging by their scorched, disheveled state, some of them had barely survived Isaac's tricks.

Shuri frowned. Isaac, meanwhile, sucked on his rattle like it was all beneath his notice.

'Roughly twenty left, give or take?'

The riffraff had mostly been thinned out in the earlier gates. These ones were surely the candidates the Papal Court had recognized as official Saint candidates—one of the twenty-four.

Not on Kina Berith's level, admittedly, but all of them possessed strength worthy of wariness. A collection of exceptionally gifted little lumps of… promise, each credible enough that "future Pope" sounded like no exaggeration at all.

Their character was equally impeccable.

"Move. We're entering the Second Gate first. You're no Saintess—what makes a nobody like the Eshuas think they can butt in?"

Ah, there it is. That's the clergy for you.

Children are the nation's future, they say. Honestly, these divine-faction idiots would collapse on their own even if I didn't bother destroying them.

Then the red-clad crowd shoved Shuri aside.

"You think we're doing this for fun? Because of that little runt, we've suffered beyond counting!"

"Exactly! He's running ahead to set traps again, isn't he? I never imagined even an Eshua would stoop to something this cowardly!"

"Shuri, you're in cahoots with him too, aren't you?"

"……!"

Shuri was speechless.

No—if I WERE in cahoots with him, I wouldn't be this upset!! Being lumped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in with that little demon of all things!

Shuri looked at Isaac, indignant, but Isaac simply yawned, drowsy. The red-haired noble boy must have read something in that, because he scoffed.

Shuri knew the boy belonged not to a faith like the Eshuas' Blue Faith, but to another entirely.

'That vivid crimson hair. The Red Faith, no doubt!'

If the signature of House Eshua, leaders of the Blue, was silver hair, then the ducal house leading the Red was symbolized by blazing scarlet locks.

With the Five Faiths perpetually at one another's throats, this kind of petty provocation was only to be expected.

"Honestly, the Eshuas putting forward a Saint? Can any of you even cast a 1st-tier holy art?"

At that point, other children still hidden in the brush stepped in to defend them.

"Are you blind?! That kid just took out the gatekeeper demon—that enormous thing!"

"He's right! Eshua or not, a child that young wielding that kind of power…"

"Took out, my foot! If he's Eshua, he must have planted the traps so they'd disarm themselves as he passed!"

"What?"

"How would that even…"

As one of them tried to ask how that was possible, the red-haired boy strode up to Isaac.

Then he roughly yanked something from Isaac's neck. What he'd snatched was the pendant necklace holding the Saintess's ring that Rillai had given him.

"See this! Every other kid came in with a one-use blessing cast on them, but THIS one is carrying an item instead. Suspicious, no?"

"It looks perfectly ordinary to me?"

"Agreed. He's still a nursling—can't cast blessings himself—so someone probably stuck an auto-artifact on him."

These were, after all, the Papal Court's elite-educated Saint candidates; item appraisal came to them as easily as breathing.

Yet at their reactions, the red-haired boy sneered as though they were hopeless amateurs.

"This is why you lot never amount to anything. What kind of idiot sends a nursling into a deathtrap with just ONE blessing on him? Show me that fool."

That fool happens to be my uncle, though (?)

Ignorant fools who shove their own kid's back toward a Demon King hunt, telling him to go kill it, at that (?)

'Well, if you're the Saintess's family, I suppose it tracks. Sure.'

These were, after all, the lunatics who'd sent an eleven-year-old off to slay the Demon King.

But to the other faiths, such a thing was evidently beyond comprehension. The red-haired boy smiled.

"We've all figured it out. There's a trap-disabling enchantment bound into this ring itself. That's why no traps triggered wherever this child walked. He didn't find the right path on his own—the ring did it for him. Proof enough: when we followed the same route, the bombs went off, didn't they?"

Hm. Kid's actually a decent thinker—but he's cranked the steering wheel the wrong way. Cranked it so hard wrong he's driving straight off a cliff.

"That's why you were chasing him, isn't it, Shuri? The picture never added up. Normally the older one leads the way."

No?? He just got dragged along??

Shuri stared at them, utterly flabbergasted.

But everyone around him nodded as though a mystery had finally been solved.

"So THAT'S why only he came through unscathed! And the Second Gate's demon vanished because of his ring too! Oh—then that means…"

Basking in the reactions, the red-haired boy flashed a victorious smile and turned toward the Second Gate.

"Correct. With this, we can sidestep every trap ahead."

"WAAAAH!"

"Niger! You're a genius!"

The red-haired boy called Niger marched into the Second Gate in full swagger—holding aloft the ring he'd snatched from Isaac, no less.

"Come forth, Treasury of the Saintess! The true Saint has arrived! Come and receive this noble body without delay!"

Ten more children, red uniformed to a one, followed the boy's lead in a stampede.

They stepped through the Second Gate.

Perhaps the ring really had been the answer—the gate's traps stayed perfectly silent.

The children cheered, convinced they'd won.

"There! I can see the Third Gate! It's right ahead! The Skeleton Demon King's remains are in there, aren't they?"

"Yes! Claiming the Skeleton Demon King's remains—the relics no Saint in history has ever brought back—shall be the deed of the Red Ducal House's third son! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Niger Sephet!"

BANG!!!!

"AAAAGH!"

"Niger!"

Screams erupted as an explosion tore through the Second Gate.

It was a trap.

"Why?! With this, there's no way a trap could have trigg—AAAGH!"

BANG!! BANG! BANG!!

Hearing the thunderous blasts and shrieks, Shuri pressed a hand to his face as if to say, what a pack of idiots.

Isaac, who had sent the fools in ahead on purpose, merely wiped his nose.

Then again—maybe this country really does destroy itself without me lifting a finger.