Nemea (3)
"...Hah! So, you wish to strike a bargain with me?"
"You may be a servant of the Fallen, but that is no reason I cannot deal with you. If you desire my power so desperately, very well. I shall name the price you must pay."
"Go. Bring me your master's head."
"With your own hands, you will slay that greedy bitch who seduced her brothers and sisters and betrayed our father."
"Well? Have you the will to do it?"
"....."
Nemea's words left me stunned.
"That's the plan, actually."
"....?"
"I'm weak right now, so I've latched onto that snake bitch Uroboros — but the second I get strong enough, the first thing I'm doing is caving that bitch's skull in."
"?????"
This time it was Nemea who froze. Hardly surprising. I was the Avatar of Uroboros, and I had just cursed Uroboros to her face and sworn I would smash that bastard's skull in someday.
"W-what did you just say?!"
"What do you mean, what did I just say? I'm telling you my goal. I'm going to cave that bastard Uroboros's skull in for real. The second that snake doubled the tribute, Uroboros and I crossed a river we can never go back over."
"...Are you serious?"
"Of course I'm serious. You think I'm bullshitting you? I've never told a lie in my entire life."
I may have told a few benevolent lies here and there, but I could look up at the heavens without a shred of shame.
"....."
Whether she sensed that I meant every word or not, Nemea studied me with a look of genuine wonder.
"How curious. How can a servant raise his hand against his own master?"
"Servant? Who the hell are you calling a servant?"
"Very well... I understand your sincerity. But I cannot make a deal with you."
"What? Why not?"
"Did you not say you would soon leave this place? I cannot leave here. The seal placed upon me by those ungrateful Fallen who feared me is far too strong. If you truly wish to bargain with me, then you must remain here. Have you the will to do so?"
"Hmm... that's a bit of a problem."
Stay at Pista Castle? Impossible. I didn't like it, but for the time being I was Montblanc's subordinate. If I made myself king of Pista Castle without so much as asking her leave, the suspicion it would draw would be enormous. I could not afford to put her on guard. Not now.
So what the hell do I do?
I couldn't take Nemea with me because of the seal. As I'd already said, Nemea was mine. I had killed the Beast King, which meant that everything he owned — Pista Castle aside — belonged to me. And that included Nemea, who had struck a bargain with him.
I had not the slightest intention of letting anyone else use her. I had to have her. The problem was that the seal made that impossible.
But can I really not pry this thing off?
I examined the seal wrapped around Nemea with painstaking care, then brought a finger to it.
ZZZZT—!
"Ow. That stings."
Sparks leapt as if warning me not to touch it, a wave of repulsive force shoving back. My fingertip burned, but it was nothing I couldn't handle.
Hmm... I think I can break this.
"Ah, fuck it."
It looked like the kind of thing that would ruin you if you so much as laid a hand on it, but my instincts were telling me I could shatter this seal. And following my instincts had never steered me wrong.
I threw my arms wide and wrapped them around the seal.
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-ZZZZZT—!
"Gghhhk—!"
"...What are you doing?"
"Nnghhhk—!"
A violent repulsive force erupted and slammed through my entire body. Thanks to my boosted durability stat, though, it was still within what I could endure.
"Break... already... AAAAAAGH!"
I poured every ounce of strength I had into the arms locked around the seal. And then something astonishing happened.
CRRREEEAAAK—!
"...The seal. It cracked?"
A fracture had split across the barrier enclosing Nemea. The harder I pushed, the wider the cracks spread, webbing out like a spider's silk.
"Impossible! I tried to shatter it myself and it would not yield!"
Watching the seal come apart in real time from inside it, Nemea could not contain her shock.
"HRAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
SHATTER—!
It did not take long. The seal wrapped around Nemea burst apart. The translucent membrane and the iron chains vanished like a mirage.
Nemea dropped to the floor with a heavy thud and stared up at me, dazed.
"Hah... hah... ah, fuck, that was brutal."
Having to grit through the pain of the backlash while forcing strength into my arms at the same time had been no small thing.
"Hey."
"....."
Once I had my breath back, I reached a hand toward her.
"Looks like you're free now."
"You're mine."
"Come to me."
"Nemea."
"....!"
The instant I spoke her name, Nemea's eyes flew wide. Then she surged to her feet and threw herself at me.
The moment her arms closed around me, a long, fading rush of light swept through the air — and she was gone without a trace.
"...Huh?"
◈ 10-Star Mythical Beast
◈ The Golden Nemean Lion
Untearable Leather
Mythic
Nemea Summon
Mythic
"...The hell?"
In the space where Nemea had vanished, a string of notification windows bloomed in front of my eyes.
What just happened?
SHATTER—!
The seal that had pinned her down across a stretch of time too vast to measure finally broke.
Even after watching the cracks spread and the barrier give way with her own eyes, Nemea could not believe it. And how could she? She had tried to break that seal more times than she could count. Beings of her own caliber — perhaps even stronger — had placed it upon her with their own hands. Alone, she had never stood a chance.
And yet a mere human, a filthy servant of the Fallen, had shattered it.
Shock was no longer the word. She was staggered to her core.
But what stunned her even more was the moment that followed — when the servant of the greedy snake, one among the twelve Fallen, reached out his hand and spoke her name.
".....!"
Nemea.
The moment Alan called her name, she heard another voice. A voice she would never hear again in this life, and so a voice she was bound to remember for eternity — the voice of that great one.
Why His voice had overlapped with Alan's, even Nemea did not know. What she knew without any doubt was this: the instant that voice reached her, a swell of emotion rose in her chest that she could not hold back.
She ran to Alan on pure instinct and threw her arms around him. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Nemea let herself be absorbed.
"Tch. Still a shame, though."
I clicked my tongue, staring at Pista Castle in the distance, the regret sitting bitter on my tongue. If I could have taken that castle too, how sweet would that have been?
"Heh..."
Then it struck me how bottomless my own greed really was, and I let out a dry, humorless laugh. The Beast King's finest fairies, his fortune, his items, his Growth Stones — I had stripped that man of everything he had spent a lifetime building, and I still felt like it wasn't enough. I had become a hungry ghost, the kind that could eat and eat and never once feel full.
I forced the craving for Pista Castle out of my mind and turned around.
"....."
"....."
The Beast King's fairies were standing there. No — my fairies.
Bunny, Rodica, Trivi, Amulie, Rudy, Asilica, Rebecca, Rosemary, Hani. Nine beastman fairies, each with a charm entirely her own, all watching me with grief written plainly across their faces.
"I'll say this first, so you hear it from me. I'm sorry. I made you my fairies out of nothing but my own selfishness, and now I'm walking away and leaving you behind. I really am sorry."
"...It's all right, Master."
"You're not abandoning us, so... I'm okay."
"Hhk... Master..."
Just as each of them carried a different kind of beauty, their reactions were all their own. Some told me it was fine with sadness still sitting in their eyes. Some were already in tears.
"But I promise you this. You will come back to my side, and I will never abandon you. I'm your Master, and you are my Fairies. Don't you ever forget that."
"Yes, Master."
"Hhk... hic... Master..."
Like the fairies I had taken from the Fairy Shelter, these girls would grow stronger on their own, apart from me. And on the day I sank my teeth into the Arrogant Crow's throat, they would return to their master's side and become my venomous fangs.
Until then, the beastman fairies and I would part ways — just for a little while.
"We won't get a chance to say goodbye later, so let's do it now. Come here, all of you."
"Master..."
One by one, I pulled them into an embrace and kissed them. The fairies clung to me with everything they had, making no secret of how badly they didn't want to let go.
"All right. Let's move."
"Yeees..."
They fell in behind me with leaden, lifeless steps.
Oh. Come to think of it, I never killed Jericho and Telmuer.
I was heading for the hideout where Canisia and the rest of the party were waiting, the fairies trailing after me, when it hit me that I had left Jericho and Telmuer alive.
"Tch. I should've killed that bastard before we left."
Ungrateful Jericho had tried to stab me in the back even after I'd given him a chance. My plan had been to collect the assets that were supposed to be "returned to society" before the Beast King died, then kill him and walk away.
But the surge of power Nemea had unleashed had knocked every last one of the beastman fairies unconscious, and the second the girls came to, we'd had no choice but to get out of Pista Castle immediately. The Beast King's subordinates, who had been camped in front of the C-rank dungeon Lightning-Struck City — which also happened to be the Beast King's tomb — had already returned to the city searching for their king.
One wrong move and we would have been fighting the Beast King's men in the middle of Pista Castle. The fighting itself I could have lived with. The problem was that my face might have gotten out. If my face became known, every move I made after that would come with a leash on it, and I could not afford that.
Jericho and his fairy Telmuer couldn't do a damn thing on their own anyway, so I had figured I could just ignore them.
"Well, it's not like that bastard can actually do anyth— ah, fuck."
"...Master? What's wrong?"
My face twisted. I stopped walking.
"Those bastards know my face."
"Pardon?"
How the hell had I forgotten that? I had been so careful — so painfully, obsessively careful — to keep the Beast King's men from seeing me. And then I had left Jericho and Telmuer, the two people who had actually looked me in the eye, walking around free.
What was I, a complete idiot?
"Aah, you fucking moron!"
"M-Master? What's the matter?"
I raked my fingers through my hair, irritation burning under my skin, and turned back toward Pista Castle. The party was waiting, but shutting Jericho and Telmuer's mouths came first.
"Kids. We're going back to Pista Castle."
"What?"
"We left without killing that Telmuer bastard."
"....."
The fairies blinked at one another, bewildered — and then a faint smile touched their lips as they nodded. Their farewell had just been postponed, and they were smiling because of it.