Existence (3)
The Inquisitor turned her head unconsciously at the strange sensation prickling at her back. The priests offering prayers around her came into view first.
Then she saw the blade descending toward one of those priests.
She reached for the shield she had set on the ground. Too late if she picked it up. The judgment honed through countless real battles pierced the reality of the moment.
So what was she supposed to do?
“Gah!”
Trusting the armor she wore, the Inquisitor stepped in front of the priest. The astonishingly light armor made it possible.
Clang!
The axe blade slammed into the forearm she raised as a makeshift shield. It did not break, yet the rebound shoved her arm back a fraction.
“This!”
Still, she had blocked it. Was that not enough?
The Inquisitor dropped the hand that had not touched the axe blade. She meant to draw the mace at her waist and smash it into the traitor’s skull.
“Shhh.”
In that instant, something rose from the shadows and seized the massive man.
Stepping on the back of his knees to match heights, gripping his jaw to lock his face, and drawing a blade across his throat—all of it happened at once. Blood gushed out.
“Ghk, gaaah.”
It had severed the carotid artery cleanly. The Inquisitor was certain from the sheer volume of blood spraying forth.
Next she identified the one who had done it. A dark-green cloak that looked black in the shade, and sharply pointed ears. It was Slicker.
“What in the—!”
“What do you mean, what. The bastards we half-suspected finally showed their true colors. Whether they actually shook hands with demons or not, I still don’t know, but aiming for priests who have nothing to do with anything means they probably—.”
“Demon Energy!”
The moment the attacker’s life ended, black dust scattered and a wisp of Demon Energy burst free; her face hardened.
Until now she had felt only a faint sense of wrongness. Why the Demon Energy only revealed itself now, she had no idea.
“Intruders?!”
“H-how…”
“Are you unharmed?!”
The surrounding soldiers only noticed the attackers after the Demon Energy had already spread into the air. As if the Demon Energy itself had been concealing them.
“Kill them at once…!”
That was dangerous. The Inquisitor moved to leave the spot, intending to deal with every single person who felt wrong.
Rumble.
At that exact moment a section of the wall crumbled. Right when part of the blessing had been cut off because she had stopped praying.
“……!”
It could be coincidence, yet the greater chance was that it was not. That fact rooted her feet. The Inquisitor bit her lip lightly.
“Sand Tigers!! Two Sand Tigers are coming!!”
To make matters worse, a sound that shook the earth began. Sand Tigers. Demons twenty meters long that burrowed through the ground to move.
They were the ultimate natural enemies of any wall standing on solid ground—hence the cry.
“I’ll go handle it. You just stay here and keep praying.”
“……! How would you….”
“I’m better at killing people than you are, you know?”
“……!”
At Slicker’s words her eyes flew wide of their own accord. For an instant the figure belonging to the shadows looked terribly threatening.
“The knight went up onto the wall, so worry more about that side. Ah, and hand over a holy relic too. If they ask why I killed them, I need an excuse that it was orders.”
And that feeling was not imagination.
The Inquisitor clenched and unclenched her fist at the one standing before her, then finally pulled something free and tossed it.
Thud.
“Thanks.”
Afterward she returned to her place. An even more intense blessing than before wrapped the walls in a furious embrace.
Deathbringer recalled the positions of those in his head and retraced the path he had come.
Then he seized Kankan, who had been fighting even harder to make up for his absence.
“What?!”
“We’re going to thrash some traitors.”
“The Sand Tigers are coming, what?”
So focused on what was right in front of him that he had no idea what was happening elsewhere.
Deathbringer dragged Kankan out by force.
The Demon Knight was certainly active, yet the fighting grew fiercer by the moment. Few noticed their departure.
Those who did either had no room to stop them because of the demons attacking right then, or shut their mouths upon seeing the holy relic he held high.
“Traitors?”
“Those guys. The ones like the Martial King.”
“……!”
“They attacked priests, and on top of that Demon Energy was detected. We can’t put it off just because we’re fighting demons anymore.”
Kankan was strong, yet in a place like this, unless someone was on the Demon Knight’s level, one missing person did not stand out much.
On the other hand, hunting down and killing traitors made a strong fighter’s value high. Instant death meant less damage and faster movement.
“Your job is simple. Point out the ones I don’t know yet. And handle the head-on fights.”
Besides, Deathbringer had no confidence in frontal combat. He needed at least one person to cover that part.
“Got it.”
With that much explanation the Red Mane understood at once. Good that they communicated well.
“Then let’s go right now. Kill every last one of them inside the walls, and we have to take a shot at the Martial King too.”
“……!”
The hunt had only just begun.
Whoa. Way too many demons. Seriously, unconscionably too many.
I swung my sword with that thought. I had spammed Bombard a bit too much, so my mana was scraping the bottom; I did not bother wrapping myself in skills.
There was only a slight resistance at the wrists anyway. They still cut just fine like this, so it did not matter.
Slash!
I tore another harpy apart, then wiped a bit of my face. I had killed so many that blood was splattered all over my mug.
The blood pushed onto the back of my hand and fingers gathered into droplets before flying off with a single gesture.
Kyaaaaah!
“Tch.”
In that gap another one came flying. The thing that charged like a cannonball looked ready to shove me aside and smash the wall itself.
But I was not about to throw my life away just to save a little mana.
I split the incoming creature in half. The body, divided vertically, split open and tumbled down on either side of me.
The wall steeped in blessings was extremely solid; it did not collapse just because two halves of a body fell. What happened to the ground behind the wall was anyone’s guess, but corpses had already piled up there as high as they could, so it was fine.
Kiiiiiik!
Another one landed on the wall and worked its mouth full of writhing flames. It looked like it wanted to spit fire right after alighting.
But this wall was not merely hard.
Hell, even my HP dropped by 1 every three seconds; what would that do to demons?
Sizzle!
The moment it touched their skin, steam rose and they began to burn. Not strong enough to melt them in one go, but perfect for making demons sting.
The one about to breathe fire lost its stance and delayed the attack by half a beat. That was enough time for me to pull my body free and cut through its skull.
Thud!
The severed head fell beyond the wall.
“Whew.”
But really, how long did I have to keep fighting? I felt like I had taken down quite a few already….
I glanced at the situation around me.
I had been going back and forth along the wall, prioritizing the demons that could smash it, so the big ones were gone for now. The flying types still remained in numbers because I only grabbed the ones that charged me or came within reach.
Outside the wall on the ground… wow, did someone spill candy? I had left the ones down there alone because there was nothing I could do, and now they were swarming densely.
Some were even driving their claws into the wall and climbing. Especially the ones obsessively targeting the few sections that had crumbled just earlier.
KWAANG!
Still, the wall held firm, and the mages kept steadily cleaning them up. So it would only take a little more time; if things continued like this it would be more or less fine.
“Sand Tigers!! Two Sand Tigers are coming!!”
As long as nothing that could count as a mid-boss or boss interfered, that is.
“I thought this was going to be easy.”
Speak of the devil—the moment I thought we could clear it stably if no boss appeared, two monsters that looked boss-tier showed up. I did not need this kind of voice recognition, or rather thought recognition.
KUUUUUUUNG.
And these bosses even had the trait of moving underground. I clicked my tongue at the ground that rippled and formed slight mounds.
I could not catch those from here. Firing a Chamgyeok all the way from here to there would burn a ton of mana. Bombard itself was already insane on mana consumption.
As for a mana spear… I had no idea how much damage a skill would do after punching through dirt. I had not even seen their exteriors yet, but anything that could tunnel underground would have extremely tough hide.
In my judgment it looked highly likely to be pointless. Better not.
Going down to fight them… even setting aside the Archmage’s warning, it was a bit much. Not one but two, plus plenty of small fries around, and crucially I had no mana left.
I could handle ordinary things without mana, but something that tricky was still too much.
KUUUGGGRRR.
Even in that moment the Sand Tigers kept approaching. Their rough movements that flung the traces of magic on the surface and the demons themselves flew were aimed precisely at the gate.
I had no idea what their intelligence was like, but it was a clear target.
Ah, now I really want to undo the seal. If I just released the seal I would not need to skim skills like this!
When you stand you want to sit, when you sit you want to lie down—thoughts of inflating my mana kept bubbling up. The fact that it had been modified so I could not release it on my own was a lifelong regret.
KWAANG!!!
But my feelings and reality ran on different tracks.
In the end I had to watch the gate get smashed without even laying a hand on them. The only consolation was that this city treated the gate breaking as a basic assumption.
“Kill them!”
“Don’t let them reach the shelters!”
The reason treating a broken gate as the baseline was a consolation was that the preparations for exactly this situation made the response afterward razor-sharp.
Mages filling the breached spots with earthen walls, the forces stationed throughout the city opposing the Sand Tigers—those things.
It was just that every time those enormous things went wild, the property damage skyrocketed.
Hmm, should I go down after all? I tore open the mouth of a gargoyle that charged me, flung it at a wyvern, and pondered for a moment.
Outside the wall would be one thing, but now that they had entered the city proper, disobeying the warning was not an issue, and I had already taken care of almost every demon that could smash the walls.
What remained were only the small fries outside… and other people could handle small fries. The damage they caused would not match what the Sand Tigers produced.
More than anything, me handling the small fries while all those people handled the bosses was far less efficient than me handling the bosses while the many people cleaned up the small fries.
“Whew.”
Right. Let’s go help. There are two of them, not one.
They had even split up, so even with low mana my life would not be in danger. I could manage one of them somehow.
Thinking that, I wrapped what little mana I had left around my legs to head down.
“……!”
If I had known from the start that I had no choice, I would not have wasted the effort.
“You….”
I swung my hand at the Hollywood-level beauty. Another demon that could not read the room was torn apart by my hand.
Yet she showed no reaction at all.
Of course. Anyone who would react one by one to this spectacle would not be standing up here wearing a single scrap of Greek-style thin cloth.
No—before the clothes, simply climbing onto this wall was the problem. No human without extreme confidence in their skill would stand here.
The bigger problem was that I had not noticed her approach at all.
No alert had sounded, and I had not even caught a presence. This was dangerous. Cold sweat trickled down my back.
At least she had spoken first; that was fortunate. Otherwise I might have only noticed after a knife was buried in my back.
Kiiik.
Kill. Right now.
I let the faint metallic ringing in my ears slide past and continued thinking.
More than that, had she not just said ‘doesn’t recognize me’? And she had even spoken as if looking down on Gretchen.
A 72 Demon Knight ranked below a Great Demon would not talk like that….
“Sloth, is it.”
Wow. Archmage, are you watching? Your summoning spell succeeded. A real Great Demon has taken the stage.
Kiiigiik.
Kill it right now.
I discarded everything else and focused on the opponent. Martial King or whatever, what stood before me was the rank immediately below the final boss. I could not let my guard down against that.
Of course they would have balance-patched it to match the story progression. Of course they would have!
By setting it was at least among the top eight fingers across all demons; I could not help but be tense.
Named like this always came out a bit stronger than the bosses of the same period even when they appeared according to the story.
…Still, I hoped she would go easy. My only crime was being trapped in the game and unable to leave; please, could you take it easy on me?
Gyaaaaah.