An Easy Way to Make Money (5)
In the original story, once this whole affair had been wrapped up, the police launched a thorough investigation.
In the course of that investigation a shocking truth came to light:
the man had been trying to sacrifice his own family to summon a demon.
Even more startling was the fact that the demon had already been half-summoned; the protagonist never realized it, but the place had been extremely dangerous.
Naturally, once he learned the truth, the protagonist underwent a psychiatric evaluation to make sure he had not been possessed, and he grew considerably closer to the heroine as well…
Still panicking, the man muttered under his breath, then offered me a greasy, servile smile.
“Hey, let’s talk this over. No need to make things hard on ourselves, yeah? You need money? I can give you money. Just say the word. I’ll get you anything you want.”
“Haha. I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be necessary.”
Just kill him and take it.
It was a truth that held in both my previous life and this one.
Maybe if I’d grown up in a halfway normal household I would have chosen differently, but I had already turned out this way.
From my answer the man finally understood there was no room left for negotiation; despair settled over his face.
Then he began to laugh like a madman who had completely lost his mind.
“Ha… haha… hahahah! You’re going to kill me?! You can’t! You can’t do that! Hwahahahahaha!”
—Shring.
“Just rest easy.”
“Ghk—!”
It looked like he was about to try something, so I simply swung my sword as fast as I could.
He dies in the original story anyway, so killing him now shouldn’t change much.
Shouldn’t it? It shouldn’t.
Having come this far, even thinking about a peaceful solution felt ridiculous.
Yet even after his body had been split cleanly into upper and lower halves, the man kept talking.
“Heh… heh-ha! Heh-hahahah! Uhihahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!”
What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
I swung again, turning the two pieces into four.
But the man seemed to feel no pain at all; he never stopped laughing.
Thinking that destroying his vocal cords might shut him up, I sliced them apart as well. It made no difference.
Even after his head had been completely separated from his body, the laughter continued to pour out of him.
Listening to that endless cackling, I started to wonder just how long he could keep making noise, so I found a decent spot and sat down.
No smell of blood.
The absence of scent meant some kind of measure had already been taken.
But there was nothing I could do about it.
When I tried to run, the door refused to open for some reason; when I swung my sword at it, the thing was so solid it didn’t even scratch.
In the end, I had no choice but to see this through right here.
“Keep yapping all you like.”
After laughing like a lunatic for a long while, the man finally began to mutter quietly.
“It can’t end like this… I have to die? Why do I have to die? If I die, you should die too—that’s only fair, right? Do you have any idea how hard I worked? And you want to trample all over it?
Some random bastard who crawled out of god-knows-where? I was just about to take off… and you want to drag me down? That’s never going to happen. Never… never, never…”
With those final words, the man’s voice stopped.
Is it over now?
I brushed the dust off my backside and stood up. The four pieces of the man’s body suddenly crumbled into powder and scattered.
The sight was so far beyond anything I had imagined that I froze in place for a moment.
My body locked up in shock.
And then it appeared.
An overwhelming pressure suddenly radiated from the altar, and a tremendous amount of Black Mana flooded the space.
Immediately afterward, the source of that pressure revealed itself.
It took the form of a lion with a jet-black mane. At a glance its entire body looked drenched in blood, yet at the same time it seemed to gleam like pure gold.
I had no idea what was going on, but I knew this was an extremely dangerous situation.
One wrong move and I might never leave this place alive.
The gap in combat power between me and that existence was that vast.
I wanted to run, but the sheer pressure made my hands and feet tremble so violently I couldn’t move.
Only my mouth was free to make sound.
“…Forgive me, but may I ask who you are?”
At my question the lion-shaped it grinned.
No need to ask who it was? Everyone would realize once I went outside?
I had no idea what that meant.
But I could tell that the being before me wanted a conversation with me.
If it had not desired dialogue, there would have been no reason to show such goodwill and answer my words.
“Then… why have you appeared in this place?”
Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
I racked my brain desperately.
The being watching me laughed as if amused and continued.
Wherever its gaze fell, the powdered remains of the man must have been lying.
My body still wouldn’t move, so I couldn’t check, but that was almost certainly the case.
“You’re saying that man summoned you?”
As it spoke, it began to sift through the powder that had once been a man.
The being itself never left the altar, yet the powder was being stirred by some invisible force.
Before long a creature that looked like a leech emerged from the dust.
Seeing it, the lion bared its teeth in a grin.
Then it floated the leech-like thing into the air and continued speaking.
A voice spilled from the leech-like creature.
“…I greet the eternally great Great Demon, Lord Marbas…”
The being called Marbas rebuked the leech-like demon.
At those words the leech-like creature flinched and trembled.
“N-no, of course not. How could I possibly…”
“That is… I do not know…”
At Marbas’s words the leech turned its head toward me and answered.
“Y-yes… I see him…”
When the leech replied hesitantly, the lion’s smile deepened further.
The moment Marbas finished speaking, the leech bowed its head and cried out loudly.
“I am truly grateful! Lord Marbas! Even if thousands of years pass—no, even if I am annihilated—I shall remember this and live in gratitude!”
Marbas laughed with satisfaction.
“O-of course—”
The instant those words left its mouth, Marbas crushed the leech-like demon.
Then it looked at me once more.
A word that grated on my ears had slipped out of Marbas’s speech. Contractor? Who was whose contractor?
“What do you mean by ‘Contractor’?”
As if it had known I would question that word, Marbas opened its mouth again.
Marbas bared its teeth and continued.
Marbas’s face filled with laughter as it went on.
I could only stand there blankly, listening to Marbas’s words.