The World (5)
“…They are not the ones you must take responsibility for.”
A sobbing voice pleaded with me.
“So please, pay them no mind. There is no reason for you to serve any further. I beg you…….”
Yes, it was a plea. An earnest appeal, begging me to look away.
Wishing solely for me to rest, wishing that I would no longer suffer.
But…….
Slash!
[Kyaaaaaaah!]
Atop the turtle, upon its shell.
Bare hands, limited space, and ground that never stopped heaving—disadvantages too great to bear—so the warrior had reluctantly shifted the battlefield onto the carapace itself, and now she drew a single breath.
The corpses piled with every step she took had been wrought by her two hands alone.
“Hoo.”
Hot breath spilled from cracked lips. Jingle. The earring hanging from one ear swung wildly like a pendulum, ringing with the sharp cry of metal.
Grrr!
In the midst of it, a new foe that had joined the fray with the change of battlefield lunged from behind. Creatures born when every manner of insect, sea cucumber, anemone, and shellfish had been demonized.
Thud!
Of course most of them died vomiting their guts the moment she struck them hard enough, so they needed little real attention.
[Come here. Come here!!]
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
What she truly had to watch for were the ones already present: the Seiren, the sea lice, and the crab-like demons.
The first had been demons from the start, their danger needing no explanation. The second were palm-sized vermin that clung to the whole body and sucked blood—pure misery. The third were simply too hard, and worse, indistinguishable from the rocks thrusting up around them.
Thus she set her goal not on remaining uninjured, but on reducing the enemy’s numbers while surrendering what had to be surrendered.
Common sense that heavy bleeding meant one could not fight long was discarded. Common-sense fighting was never the specialty of Nordah’s warriors.
Crack!
She dodged only as much as necessary; claw marks scored her forearm, and the stone clenched in her fist smashed into a Seiren’s face.
The demon—close enough to human to possess a brain inside its skull—staggered for an instant.
She could not waste such an opening. She strode straight into the Seiren’s embrace.
That single step blocked the attacks of the others; her fingers plunged into the Seiren’s mouth. Thumbs hooked into either side of the jaws, she seized the head and wrenched with all her strength, pulling sideways.
[Aaaaaaagh!!]
Inside her grip the Seiren’s scalp tore clean away. The blood that sprayed painted the body of a certain berserker yet again.
Thud!
Then, with her innate divine strength, she seized the half-dead Seiren and swung it like a club.
The wings scraped the ground and swept away the mutated sea lice; the torso smashed into another creature that had been flailing helplessly. Two Seiren tumbled down together in companionable ruin.
“Is that all you’ve got, bird-brains?!”
Still the enemies remained many, and she needed still more blood.
She roughly scraped off the sea lice crawling up her body, then leapt from the ground so they would have no time to climb again.
Rumble.
And just as she was about to land, a crab that had been pretending to be a rock rose with a crack and snapped its pincers wide.
The claws alone were large enough to seize a human whole; she never ignored them. A bad grab would snap a waist clean in two.
Tap!
So she lightly stepped onto the claw and leapt again. The pincer closed half a beat too late. Boom. Her body settled atop the very shell that had dared try to catch her.
Crunch-crunch-crunch!
With the penalty of bare hands she could not punch through the carapace. But did that mean she had to let the enemy go free? Not at all.
Just as she had exploited the soft interior of a Seiren’s mouth, she seized the bulging eyeballs and ripped them out.
The crab-demon thrashed its claws in agony, yet that did nothing to return the eyes already torn free.
Business finished, her body turned toward the next foe. A sea-cucumber monster aiming at her vomited something. The bright-yellow liquid melted flesh with the lightest touch.
But that much she could dodge. Twisting like an acrobat, she landed clear of the vomit and kicked the razor clam rising from that very spot.
The thin shell shattered; the plump contents of the razor clam split lengthwise and bared teeth.
The bifid body of the razor clam stabbed like tentacles into the place where she stood.
[Come with me, come with me!]
In that moment a Seiren folded its wings and dove at her. Of course it had no wish to smash into a rock-hard carapace; just before impact the wings snapped open, enormous.
“Ha!”
But what good was such a perfect landing? Its talons never caught her.
Her body kicked off the ground, vaulted over the Seiren’s shoulder, and settled on its back. Crack. Her brutal grip seized the Seiren’s arm—its wing.
[Eugyaaaaaah!!]
With a grinding crunch the joint finally snapped. Wham! Adding a kick to that, bones bursting through skin was no trouble at all.
Having broken the Seiren’s wing, she planted a foot on the fallen creature and completely crushed its skull.
Shhhh-shhhh-shhhh.
A sound like waves scraping the ear. The rush of sea lice flooding in like a black tide.
Even when she tore free at once, a few still managed to latch onto her.
Along the black veins that had risen like scars from Demon Energy Invasion, the sea lice clung with vicious tenacity and drank her blood.
Crunch!
It did not even itch. Whether their teeth were buried in her skin or not, she tore them off with tough fingers, flung the vermin to the ground, and stomped them flat.
The sea lice’s guts burst; blood burst from her own flesh as well.
“Come at me harder!”
[Don’t go…….]
[You mustn’t leave…….]
By then the ones backing away and protecting themselves were the demons—at least those individuals that still possessed the intellect to think.
The one who fought while soaking her entire body in blood, whether her own or another’s, and thereby proved her valor: Berserk.
Even demons recoiled from the madness that lived up to that name.
No matter how violent they were, demons still retained enough reason to think; the result was only natural.
“Ha!”
Yet that very sight was what she had been aiming for, what her name demanded.
Battle, after all, was half won the moment the enemy’s spirit broke.
“Cowards!”
Instead the demons looked ridiculous. Here she was, alone and raging this boldly, yet they—overwhelming in numbers—were the ones shrinking back in fear. What were they supposed to do?
Even in the intertribal conflict she had fought at seventeen, nothing like this had happened. She had had to kill fifty warriors by herself then as well, but at least those fifty had not flinched out of terror! Only after all fifty were dead had the remaining tribespeople trembled in fear!
Boom!
At that moment the body of the turtle led by the serpent fully mounted the earth and halted its steps. Whenever its head reared, savage waves surged from the sea.
Whoooosh!
Water that had climbed the high ground in an impossible form swallowed every canal and every scrap of surrounding land.
Kyaaaak!
Grrr.
The ones who thrived because of it were the mermen.
Riding the seawater, the mermen sprayed acid in every direction, melting useless structures, and gathered the corpses of people to chop them fine.
Considering that most of the bodies scattered here belonged to soldiers or adventurers who had fought bravely, it was an enormous insult.
Even she, who normally cared nothing for the bodies of the dead once they were buried out of sight, felt her eyebrows twitch.
Ptuiii!
Worse, they piled the desecrated corpses into towers. Not in one place, but in many!
Should she thrash them? She had no interest in the afterlife, yet this seemed to hold neither honor nor respect nor even the barest scrap of decency.
A small debate ran through her mind.
I approve.
Someone approved.
Thud!
“—?!”
But as the turtle that had seemed ready to advance forever sank down, her impulse never reached execution.
Crunch. From the holes between the carapace plates, long hidden by every kind of seaweed and coral, something burst forth.
Every one of them was a merman with a swollen belly.
“……!”
And those mermen went straight to the corpse piles and thrust their tails into them. The tails pulsed in a motion that could only be egg-laying no matter how one looked at it.
Disgustingly, the goal of those damned things had not merely been to drive humans out; they also meant to make nests of this land.
And upon the corpses of enemies who had fought so fiercely!
“…Demons!”
Yet was she simply to watch? Even while feeling her reason grow steadily hazy from Demon Energy Invasion, she clearly distinguished her targets.
Kill them.
Kill every last one of those things trying to hatch eggs.
Bloodshot, reddened eyes fixed precisely on the targets through a mind that spun as if drunk.
What she aimed for were not the ones already outside, but the ones still unemerged from the holes—in other words, the damned things still hiding inside the turtle’s shell.
Her body slid like water into the rotting, decaying beast’s carapace.
Will this place become our grave?
“It would be an honor!”
Will our corpses become their nests as well?
“Ha!”
Rotten flesh and pooled blood soaked her ankles.
“There will be more that I kill than demons born from my body!”
She gripped a stone.
Well. Even though the Hero that kid treasures so much is dying, is there truly no reason to intervene? Do you think so too, Gretchen?
「You!!」
The Hero and innocent citizens and any number of people are dying even at this very moment.
「Shut that mouth this instant—」
Can you really just stand there and do nothing?
When had she last felt this sensation of burning herself alive?
When she slew the dragon in that western sea? When the Demon Knight ran wild before her eyes? Or when she protected the walls, or when she forged footholds all the way up into the clouds overhead?
Or was it now?
She had forced a golden barrier into existence to hold back the demons. She knew it was an enormous strain, yet it was still good.
Others were staking their lives; for her, who bore the greatest duty, not to stake hers would have been unjust.
[Good heavens, are you daring to care about something else while leaving me here? Is that it?!]
A peal of laughter rang out together with thunder that crashed and rolled. Boom, booom! Behind her a volcano she had only ever seen in picture books erupted in real time, slamming volcanic bombs into the earth.
The heat that pierced even the protection of the dragon-scale armor was so extreme that breathing itself required deliberate effort.
The inside of her lungs felt as if it were scorching away.
[Young, so young!]
In that instant the lava giant simply brought its arm crashing down. The giant missing one arm remained plenty threatening with the one that remained.
Boom!
Still, when it came to running she had trained hard enough hunting Moby Dick.
She sprinted until the muscles of her legs felt ready to tear, dodging the hand descending from above. By the time her lungs seemed lodged just beneath her throat, her feet barely escaped the hand’s range.
Splat!
In exchange, lava crushed beneath her feet sprayed in every direction. The armor infused with Holy Power easily blocked the immediate heat, yet no one could say how long that would last.
Clang!
Moreover there came an attack slipping through a perfect gap. She somehow managed to block it with her great shield.
Slash! Slash, shnk! Perhaps because it had three pairs of arms, a continuous triple assault arrived with no resting tempo.
She had poured Holy Power into so many places that less remained for the shield; the force that arrived felt considerably heavy.
“……!”
Yet the enemy’s attack did not end there. The ground bulged upward and shattered the Inquisitor’s balance.
Behind her, volcanic bombs; in front, a demon that could strike without pause thanks to the advantage of many arms.
The Inquisitor’s brows knotted fiercely.
Boom!
A surface need not always be flat. In that regard, pushing everything away in a spherical form was something not only the Demon Knight but she as well could do.
Compared to the demonic energy that ground the surroundings to dust because of its densely gathered lines, Holy Power was merely a push—yet even so.
“Hup!”
She had learned that fact long ago. Likewise she knew that while releasing power in a sphere to repel the enemy, her own body was not fixed in place.
The Demon Knight had left countless precedents.
Thus the Inquisitor faithfully followed what she had studied. Separate from the power spreading in all directions, she swung her shield.
The demon that had been shoved back only a single step by its robust Demon Energy took a blow that rang with a slicing sound against the shield.
Because the Inquisitor had swung so that the narrow edge of the shield became the striking face, flesh was not merely cut but gouged.
[Not bad.]
Yet the enemy was not so easily handled. In that brief interval it moved an arm, seized the shield, and stretched fingers toward her.
Ding-ding-ding. The Inquisitor’s instincts rang the alarm.
Boom!
“……!”
She rolled and dodged by a hair. Recalling the flash that had nearly pierced her skull, she moved her tingling body.
In that short span a lightning bolt had come and gone, leaving its trace.
The places where she had only roughly smeared Holy Power now sizzled and cooked from the lava that had seeped between the armor plates while she rolled.
[But still clumsy.]
The Inquisitor restored only nerves and muscles, left the burns on her skin alone, and rose.
Thrust.
“……!”
Her thigh was pierced by rising spines.
“Nngh!”
The pain of flesh punctured and muscle cooking was beyond words.
Yet by the grace of God, the Inquisitor was among those most accustomed to searing agony in all the world. This much she could endure.
She forced her feet free and advanced. It was truly fortunate that lava vanished wherever Holy Power touched it.
The speed at which the demon’s spines grew was soon overtaken by the speed at which she cleared spines, restored flesh, and pressed forward.
Rumble-rumble!
Just as she seemed to have overcome one trial, a spiked ball came rolling furiously from the diagonal front.
Bang!
The spiked ball slammed into the large shield and produced friction. Thrust! Those damned spines rose wherever she stepped. Splat-splat. Human-shaped dolls rising from the lava were a bonus.
Every direction was the enemy itself.
Thud!
Of them all, the first the Inquisitor targeted was a lava man. She twisted her waist and smashed the one behind her. Its head burst against the mace and it simply scattered.
With the core of Demon Energy removed, it would not rise again unless remade.
In succession she cleared the spiked ball with powerful force, then moved once more after clearing spines.
How on earth had the Demon Knight faced this? He had possessed neither shield nor power to purify lava. The thought of him struggling vaguely made her heart ache.
Bang, bang, bang!
Yet her own vessel was already full enough of adversity and hardship that she had no room to mind another’s. The Inquisitor somehow endured the pouring attacks.
Perhaps because she was not the agile-fighting type, most of her style consisted of purifying, blocking, and recovering with Holy Power.
[Truly wretched.]
The problem was this: roughly two-thirds of the Holy Power she could mobilize was being devoted to that barrier.
The Inquisitor was driven into a corner in an instant.
[With all that fretting without choosing one thing or the other, what do you think you can do? The power of God cannot be infinite, and the force you can muster at once must also have a limit.]
She could not deny it.
The more of God’s power she used, the greater the amount of Holy Power she could endure became, yet so far neither side was infinite.
The amount of Holy Power the vessel called herself could hold at once was limited, and the amount of force that would refill the vessel each time it emptied would eventually end—more precisely, the vessel called herself would shatter.
And in such a situation, by reducing the available force to one-third for the sake of maintaining the barrier…….
In truth she had to consider that there was little she could do. With a mere third of her power, the probability was high that she could only endure, never kill a Great Demon.
“You are right.”
Yet this flesh and soul had been bestowed from the beginning to be used in exactly this way; if so, what of it?
“But that is my mission.”
[You know nothing of efficiency. You are more precious than those miserable humans.]
“I have heard such talk many times. Yet they are not people who steeled themselves for sacrifice, nor people who told me they would buy time so that I might do my work.”
Save as many as possible. Since a human life cannot be measured in value, count the numbers before your eyes and decide.
Someone in the temple had said so, and she had acknowledged that it was “efficient.” Yet…….
“And in the scriptures I read, it said not to abandon such people.”
God had never called that “right.” She herself had never regarded it as “the right thing.”
Then, if the opinion of God and of herself thus coincided, was it not her duty to follow it joyfully?
“And who said I can do nothing?”
[…Ha!]
“I will defeat you. I will certainly destroy you! That is what I must do!”
Thud! Another approaching lava man died; the spiked ball and firebombs shattered to pieces.
Her whole body, seared by lava and fried by lightning, shed dead flesh and grew new flesh with every blow she took.
“I will defeat you. I will certainly destroy you! That is what I must do!”
[…Ha!]
Her body, once blackened, shone pure white once more.
“By the right of the Inquisitor, I shall now carry out the death sentence upon the heretic!”
In answer the Holy Power that had seemed to be fading swelled a little further. Even that was endlessly insufficient to reverse the situation, yet.
[Fine. Well, the more stupidly you act, the more I profit, so it is no concern of mine.]
Moreover the one the Inquisitor faced was a demon shameless enough that the moment it took a wound in close combat it immediately shifted the battle back to long range.
[Since things have come to this, shall we make a wager?]
“……?!”
[The content is simple. The moment you lower that barrier, your companion dies!]
Behind Pandemonium lava surged up, then at once flowed cleanly away. Left in its place was now a round cocoon like an egg.
[It will be most amusing!]
Crack. The cocoon split and revealed one whose entire body was bound and confined by rock.
The Inquisitor’s eyes flew wide open as she at last learned the whereabouts of the Demon Knight she had wondered about so much.
…Yes.
I… really don’t think I can just stand by and do nothing.
Crack.
Someone’s fingers twitched, unnoticed by anyone.