Apologize with Death
“Could that thing have… been consumed by a demon…?!”
“What the hell? What the hell? The tiger went black!”
I wiped away a little more blood as I listened to the Archmage’s low murmur. Panic? Shock? Unfortunately, I felt none of those things.
From the moment Biryuho swallowed the Great Demon’s corpse—or from the way the Great Demon had gone down a little too easily—I had already considered the possibility that something like this might happen.
After all, high-ranking enemies like Great Demons don’t die easily. That’s just basic genre law. Until you personally watch the body burn or get purified, you always treat resurrection as a live threat. And if someone goes and eats the corpse? Even worse. I’d be nervous if an ally did it. When it isn’t even an ally? That’s a guarantee.
“This time I’ll make you my companion on the road to the underworld.”
Still, having braced for it didn’t stop the disappointment from settling in. Even without that thing coming back, I already had more than enough opponents to deal with.
“You think a mere demon can manage that?!”
“Be careful, Inquisitor!”
“This time, you alone will meet your death!”
The one silver lining was that the Inquisitor was still in one piece. At least I wouldn’t have to waste energy setting the stage for a fight the way I had last time.
“I don’t know what that thing is, but if it’s alive, that’s enough for me! Hah! This time Berserk is definitely taking it down!”
Berserk lit up the moment she realized there was still something left to fight. Honestly, part of me wanted to just let the two of them handle it.
It made sense. Berserk was human, so holy power didn’t hurt her, and her durability was excellent—she actually matched up well with the Inquisitor. Me, on the other hand… compatibility wasn’t even the issue. My body was in no state for this.
“Kh—!”
“Don’t get up!”
But that wasn’t going to fly, was it? A demon I’d thought was finished was standing there perfectly fine. My concept would never allow me to just sit and watch.
“Out of the way.”
The bleeding had slowed a lot compared to earlier, at least. The Archmage’s quick patch job had restored a bit of my HP as well. Moving was the right call.
I shook off the Archmage’s hand and forced myself upright.
“Why don’t you just stay down? Berserk’s going to take it anyway!”
“Not worth answering.”
Good. My body didn’t sway when I stood. There was a little dizziness, but it was about the same as the tinnitus I always lived with. Nothing that would be a real problem. I adjusted my grip on the sword.
“It’s coming!”
“Oh no…!”
Right on cue, the fusion of Moby Dick and Biryuho—hereafter Moby-Ho—launched its attack. The strike was aimed squarely this way, and more specifically at me.
“Not on my watch!”
The Inquisitor roared and sent a wave of holy power surging outward, but Moby-Ho was a fraction faster. It wrapped its body in water vines and shot forward like a cannonball, punching straight through the glittering tide of light and charging at us. The Archmage didn’t even have time to shield himself. He instinctively curled up and threw his arms over his head.
“Tahat!”
Fortunately, Berserk refused to let anyone steal her prey. She moved first and guaranteed the Archmage’s safety. Her halberd spun like a windmill under the power of those dense muscles and slammed hard into the approaching Moby-Ho. The creature’s body twisted off course and went flying in another direction. Whether it simply hadn’t prepared for the hit or had launched itself too fast to control, I couldn’t tell. It skidded across the ground, frantically planting its feet until it finally stopped.
That was my cue.
“Hey—you!”
Berserk was fine in every way except one: she never learned. How many times had she seen the pattern where she took the opening hit and I followed up with the second?
Well, that was her business, not mine.
I listened to her startled shout and locked onto Moby-Ho where it had come to a halt. A pitch-black slash cut through the now-green vines and carved through Moby-Ho’s afterimage. The creature reappeared a short distance away, the fin-like ornament on its back fluttering. Once again it failed to land cleanly, leaving a long gouge in the earth.
“So the maggot has returned as a rat.”
“Even this fattened beast’s body isn’t a bad vessel. Funny how you wasted such a fine body on something so pathetic.”
I don’t know about that. It was clumsy early on, sure, but from the mid-game onward it gave me a real headache. Even if I never used its full physical potential, combining its abilities the way I did? That was pretty damn good usage.
Think you can do better?
That would be a problem for me.
I kicked off the ground with that thought still running. In truth I’d already launched the moment the exchange began, so by now I was right in Moby-Ho’s face.
Clang!
My blade met Moby-Ho’s claws. Not a beast’s claws—human fingernails. When the entire body had turned black, the distinction between nail and finger had vanished, leaving only bird-like talons. A thin line of black blood beaded on the blade where it had nicked me.
“Hryaa!”
Thunk!
In the next breath it used its free hand to bat Berserk’s halberd aside. The sound of metal striking metal rang out. The unmarred hand immediately pressed index and middle finger together.
Pang!
A jet of water fired from the fingertips and sniped Berserk. She tried to dodge, but a vine had seized her ankle and forced her to take the hit on the shoulder. A clean round mark was left behind.
Bang!
Had I been sitting idle in the meantime? Not a chance. The second I judged the longsword blocked, I recovered it and went for a follow-up. But Moby-Ho checked Berserk while simultaneously lashing vines at me. Branches erupted from the ground like spears, aimed right at my heart—too dangerous to trade hits for. I cut the branch, tore free of the vine with ankle strength, and stepped back. I’d been ready for a rear attack that never came.
Berserk, by contrast, seemed willing to trade blows. She ripped the stalk free with pure leg power and kept swinging—until a thunderous impact sent her stumbling backward. After several exchanges (I noticed Moby-Ho’s reactions were a touch slow), it had used a knockback strike. Now standing on the same line as me, Berserk glared at the creature.
“Even outside a king’s domain, the body moves freely. Demon energy is still awkward to handle, but the fact that it costs nothing simply to maintain the form… that’s rather sweet. Wrath, now I understand why you only take vessels from the creations of other gods. Even if the senses differ, advantages like this make them worth using.”
Despite the ferocity of that stare, Moby-Ho remained utterly calm. Not so much composed as… intoxicated. The excited lilt in its voice sat wrong with me. The expression, easier to read now that it had shifted into a Cueoty form rather than a pure beast, only confirmed it. That flushed face screamed that something was off.
“What the hell are you even saying?!”
Berserk was never going to just stand there. She charged first. Timing stolen.
“Filthy mongrel!”
The slightly dazed Moby-Ho snapped into focus and erupted with demon energy. Good thing I hadn’t charged with her. I nearly got thrown by the blast wave.
“Get lost. This is not a fight for you to interfere in!”
“Words like that—”
“This is a fight between me and Wrath!”
“……!”
Hold on. What did it just say?
No matter how serious the expression, some things simply weren’t allowed. Renaming someone else’s character on a whim? Fine. I’m permanently locking your name as Moby-Ho from now on.
“…Tch.”
My incredulity aside, those words apparently meant something to Berserk. Even with a face full of sulk, she lowered her weapon and stepped back.
Why? The question rose on its own. No, seriously—why?
“Why are you coming back?”
I wasn’t the only one thrown. The Archmage, who had been casting buffs from the rear, looked equally baffled. Fair enough. Beyond simply having a damage dealer drop out of the fight, he had just finished chanting a Haste spell. Nothing raises the blood pressure like buffing someone who then walks off the board.
“It is a warriors’ duel. A Norda warrior does not interfere in a rightful contest between two.”
“That… doesn’t really feel like the right line for this situation.”
“Then when exactly is it supposed to come out?”
…She had a point. I could debate whether that thing even counted as a “warrior,” but was it so far off that I could flatly declare it wasn’t? The origin was the problem—demon—but it hadn’t fought dirty, had it?
…Had it? The truly underhanded one was the original Biryuho with the hostages. This one… this one… wait. It did do something to Dev! Does that not count?
Or is any duel fair game even if the fighter isn’t a warrior? I couldn’t pin down the standard.
I tried to gauge Berserk’s criteria, then gave up. People who look simple on the surface are always the hardest to read. What I needed to do wasn’t stand there gaping at her—it was to face Moby-Ho alone.
“Even so, this is—”
“Watch, mage. Or do you not trust your comrade’s victory?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“What’s going on?!”
In truth, this might even be convenient. Berserk and I had terrible coordination, and the Inquisitor’s power damaged me as well.
“There. The stage is set. Come, Wrath.”
“Do not defile my ears with your base tongue and words.”
Actually, “convenient” was underselling it. This was pure profit. I’d always soloed boss mobs anyway; needing help at this point would have been stranger.
“Die, demon.”
I ignored the conversation between Berserk, the Archmage, and the Inquisitor and crashed into Moby-Ho. Our blades—mine and its claws—locked in a brief contest of strength. Then Moby-Ho stepped in closer and thrust its clenched right hand forward. The gathered talons lightly scraped my cheek.
Shhk!
But empty-handed attacks weren’t exclusive to Moby-Ho. I loaded my fingernails with demon energy and raked upward from below. Moby-Ho jerked back at once. I’d expected the dodge, though I still didn’t understand why it staggered so hard when the attack never even landed.
I felt the wrongness but matched its movement and thrust my sword forward. Simultaneously, spears of mana sprouted and slammed down to cover every possible escape route.
Krrrng!
Moby-Ho didn’t simply take it. A faint crease formed between its brows, and instead of dodging with its body it fired vines up from the ground. The earth had already heaved as a tell, so evasion was simple. I stepped through the spiraling branches as they erupted.
“Die!”
Ice lances formed in the air and rained down. They weren’t thrown in straight lines; they curved with a mild homing function. Still, my speed was greater and I could shatter them with the longsword, so they were more nuisance than threat.
Clang, clatter.
Shattered ice sprayed in every direction. The branches rising from the ground didn’t fade with time, becoming meaningful obstacles. Rather than charge Moby-Ho recklessly, I circled, cutting thorns and observing. It stood at a slight tilt, motionless, simply continuing to fire ranged attacks.
From my perspective—knowing that closing the distance and fighting personally was far more effective—the behavior was strange.
Sssrrk.
The mystery resolved itself almost at once. The jet-black body flickered white at intervals, revealing what lay beneath. Each time, Moby-Ho’s brow furrowed harder, as if it were suppressing Biryuho’s attempt to wake.
Clang!
On top of that, this bastard was clumsy in close combat. The obvious stagger earlier, the unclean movement, the overall delayed reactions—I’d already found it odd, but it simply couldn’t handle the body well. Probably because this wasn’t its original form and it hadn’t adapted… whatever the reason, if it was full of openings, that was enough for me.
“Get away!”
Especially when it kept proving the point by relying so heavily on knockbacks. A massive water jet slammed into me and drove me back. It wasn’t ordinary water; rather than soaking me, it shredded. The wounds were only scratches, but after tearing clothes and bandages and leaving hundreds of cuts across my skin, “shredded” wasn’t far off.
Was I going to stop here?
Not a chance.
To force the fight into close range, I kicked off the ground again the instant I was pushed back.
“Kh!”
Reading my blatant intent, Moby-Ho hurriedly prepared its next skill. Water welled up beneath its feet and began flooding the surrounding ground. Stream after stream poured in like waves, freezing solid with clear, crystalline chimes. Landing there would destroy my balance.
“Pathetic.”
In that moment I understood why the thorns had never disappeared. They had been left as footholds for exactly this.
Shhk!
Whether that was the real intention or not, I chose to treat it as such. Even if the power dropped, I fired the widest sword aura I could manage. The upper halves of the spiraling thorns sheared off in clumps, leaving platforms safe enough to stand on. I climbed them.
“What a clown!”
I don’t know. I’ve never seen a clown dressed this raggedly.
I charged Moby-Ho across the makeshift platforms. Ice chunks kept spawning to target me, but it didn’t matter. I could shatter them without mana.
Screeech.
Hearing the sound from the longsword, I hurled it. Better to finish things before the blade broke. The mana-saturated sword flew like a spear.
“It won’t work!”
Despite the words, it clearly felt threatened. Moby-Ho temporarily halted the ice lances and focused on defense. Vines erupted and formed a shield.
Boom!
The blade buried itself deep. At the same time my hand closed on the two-hander at my back. Boiling mana poured into the silver blade and spat out three razor-sharp prongs. The wooden shield shattered into three pieces. Beyond it, Moby-Ho was flat on the ground—an efficient dodge, but unexpected. I hadn’t thought pride would ever let it go that low.
“Die.”
Surprise or not, failed predictions always exact a price in a fight. The instant I registered the beast-like charge, I made my call. I couldn’t dodge this.
Clang!
But “can’t dodge” didn’t mean surrender. The moment the decision locked, I abandoned the two-hander and seized one of the falling shield fragments—the longsword I had thrown earlier. Caught between us, the fragment and embedded blade blocked part of the attack. Even so, the claws sank into my left shoulder.
A flash of pain arrived together with a message.
Status effect applied
“Foolish.”
At the same time the vines still lodged in the longsword suddenly sprouted new branches and began binding my body.
“Demon Knight!”
“Stay back. The fight isn’t over.”
Behind me I heard the Inquisitor’s urgent cry and Berserk holding her in place.
“Die!”
What now? Reinforcing my body with mana wouldn’t be enough—the vines had grown too thick. Ground Crash needed space, and its principle was to condense mana into the blade then drive that condensed power into the earth in a single burst so it could spread…
Wait. Did that actually require open space?
Had I been an idiot? I applied every other skill creatively, yet never thought to adapt this one?
Technically, spreading spiral mana around myself was already an application of the same idea… still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of having been a fool.
With a hollow sense of resignation I poured mana into the blade I still held. The moment enough gathered, I detonated it.
All of that took exactly two seconds—the same two seconds Moby-Ho used to encase the area in hundreds of ice lances and fire them at me.
“This kind of thing…”
Blades of mana erupted from the sword, then from my arm, torso, and legs in sequence, shredding my sleeves and the vines binding me. It felt as though a blade-wind was blowing outward from my center.
“…won’t work on me.”
And they weren’t satisfied with clothing and wood. Their next targets became the hundreds of ice lances streaking toward me. Crash. The lances pulverized as if fed into a grinder.
“……!”
“Ah—Demon Knight!”
“See? Berserk told you it would be fine.”
Thousands upon tens of thousands of ice shards filled the air, turning the world into a pure white snowfield. Their cold froze my breath white for a moment. And in the middle of that storm I drove the longsword down in a long, vertical cut. Breaker. The startled Moby-Ho swung its arm in a similar motion.
Shhk!
I didn’t sever it completely, but I cut it—halfway through the forearm. Unholy black blood sprayed across the ground.
“You don’t even have fire!”
Yeah. Don’t need it.
I muttered the absurd reply under my breath and reached into the empty air below. The reason I’d used Breaker was also to shake the earth and bounce the two-hander upward. It didn’t rise far because of the weight, but that was enough for a lowered waist and an outstretched arm to catch it.
Clang!
My right hand seized the hilt and yanked it up. I had no intention of swinging properly—it was a shield. The blade, held diagonally in front of me, blocked Moby-Ho’s claws.
My turn again? I fired a Bombard straight ahead with the longsword, then kept the beam active and swept it across the front. My mana was truly at its dregs, but the moment I could count the newly formed ice lances with my eyes—and the moment more of that body showed white—I knew.
That thing was finished too.
“Not yet—it’s not over yet…!”
“It’s over.”
Beam and blade. The amalgam of the two silently carved through nearly everything Moby Dick and Biryuho had summoned. Moby-Ho barely managed to evade some of it; other pieces lay outside the path and survived. Still, a solid harvest.
The white portion finally claimed half its face and called forth the original owner.
“This Biryuho is still—!”
The ice lances I hadn’t finished off grazed my nape, side, and thigh, but they weren’t enough to stop me. Looking at Biryuho’s desperate face, I reversed the sword in the opposite direction from the previous swing. Moby Dick—or Biryuho—desperately transformed into a tiger and lunged, but it was already too late.
“Apologize with your death.”
Shhk!
Chamgyeok split the massive tiger. The blade, at its absolute limit, didn’t snap cleanly the way it usually did; instead it disintegrated from the tip, scattering piece by piece.
Thud!
All that remained was a hilt with no blade, and a tiger’s corpse divided into head and torso.
“To everything you toyed with.”
Cough.
At the same time, the blood I had barely been holding back finally buckled my knees.