What Will You Choose?
“…Then let me ask one last question.”
“If… there was a path that would definitely take you home, and a path that would make returning home uncertain but would surely save people. If those two were your choices… which one would you pick……?”
The sensation of a stubbornness maintained for thirty years vanishing was truly liberating, and more than that, it hurt.
It was only natural. Even back then she had lacked the confidence to bear it, and so she had covered the pain by deceiving herself that the campfire she had built was the sun.
“Hngh.”
Yet the situation was not good enough for her to remain captive to that agony.
[S-S-Snake Lord.]
“If it weren’t for you.”
Would she have had to taste this pain if the moment of death had never arrived? Even if not now, was this not a sight she would have had to face someday?
But what did that matter. Berserk picked up a stone with bloodshot eyes.
The loss hurt so much it was hard to bear. That she would have had to go through it someday was of little importance. That this was truly the path for her sister and the choice for herself did not matter either.
What truly mattered was that she was in pain right now, and the target on which she could vent the rage rising from it was right in front of her.
[I-I-If you get angry, i-it won’t do.]
Berserk smiled faintly as she looked at the demon clumsily mimicking language.
Due to its oral structure it would only ever produce slurred pronunciation for the rest of its life; its skill at moving its body far outstripped its command of human speech.
[T-T-Turtle, I t-t-took good care of you.]
“I’m going to kill you.”
Even that she would slaughter.
She charged forward on an emotion she could not tell was her own will or an impulse born of Demon Energy. Even in the moment her reason was being scraped away, her body faithfully obeyed the commands of her mind and built speed in an instant.
Swaaash.
The successive waves of blood grew deeper until they swallowed even her waist. Bloodwater forced its way into her torn wounds, adding to the corrosion and the madness.
Black veins began to bulge grotesquely across her entire body.
[I-I don’t know. J-J-Just die.]
And at last her body and the giant merman’s drew close. Bang! The moment the merman’s tail slammed the ground, the bloodwater split left and right, revealing what lay beneath.
Of course Berserk was not crushed there.
Swaash.
She dodged the tail by a paper’s breadth, flattening herself in advance of the parting waters, and finally released the breath she had been holding.
The bloodwater that had enveloped her receded in every direction and no longer bound her.
The stench of blood stabbed her nasal membranes.
Kwaang!
Ignoring the stickiness of the blood, she drove strength into her feet. As the blood that had reached her waist drained away, her body, far freer to move, soared several meters straight up.
Seogeok!
Not to be outdone, the merman swung its claws. The distance was insufficient. She confirmed one hand that failed even to graze her as it passed, then fixed her gaze on the next.
Whether it meant to slash or to seize her, that hand would serve as a foothold.
Kwak!
Before the giant hand could close around her, Berserk stamped on a finger and leapt, then hurled the stone in her grip.
While her body spun and landed on the far side, the flying stone smashed into the merman’s brow. She had aimed for an eyeball; a pity.
The slick outer hide left only a slight scratch as it sent the pebble skidding away.
Kyaaaaak!
The merman’s tail moved freely, trying to smash down on her where she had landed nearby.
Berserk dodged it lightly, then seized it in reverse. Slippery though it was, the fin growing on the tail served as a grip, making it quite usable for swinging.
Despite its enormous weight, the moment veins stood out on her arms the merman’s body moved according to her will.
“Heup!”
Adding centrifugal force by spinning round and round, she hurled the merman to the far side.
In other words, she threw it all the way to the island-like space that existed in the center of the Blood Lake.
Thud. The merman somehow landed in the middle of the island, avoiding the concave protrusion. Or rather, it had actually collided, and the protrusion might simply have been too hard to break.
Either way it was no great problem.
[Q-Q-Quietly.]
Leaving the enemy thrown and then standing still was not her style. Before the blood scattered by the impact could return, she ran across the revealed earth. Her torn and ruined traditional clothing fluttered in nothing but tiny tatters.
[T-T-Turtle, if you get hurt, S-S-Snake will be angry.]
Bang!
And the moment she sprinted so hard that the flow of air, which should have been invisible, became visible, her body arrived beside the merman in a single breath.
[I-I-I s-s-said I’d get angry!!!]
Seogeok!
As if refusing to take it lying down, the merman’s claws carved the empty air with force and sliced the air itself. Yet she was smaller than the merman. Disadvantageous for attack, advantageous for evasion.
Whoosh. The one who dodged with clever, almost artful use of her body slammed a fist into the merman’s belly hide. It was not carrying eggs, and the shock seemed to disperse through the scaleless, slick outer skin, but that did not mean the impact was zero.
After all, a merman still possessed bones and organs by biological structure.
Kyaak!
Exposed to that dull pain, the merman immediately grew irritated. Its massive body moved with composure and drove its claws into the space right in front of it.
Berserk’s feet shifted to a position that deftly avoided it. Thwack! Immediately her spinning kick slammed into the merman’s arm. An attack aimed at folding the joint the wrong way.
[G-Get out! G-G-Get out of this place!]
Apparently her strength was insufficient to break it outright. The enraged merman moved its arm to chase her, and Berserk leapt backward to evade the attack.
If only she had a weapon. If only she had something sharp.
The last thread of reason remaining in her fists and legs, which found little purchase against the hide, demanded a tool.
“Ha!”
And then it snapped. A tool? A tooool??
Weak talk! She already gripped the greatest weapon of all. A solid body, refined muscle, every sharp sense!
So she needed no tools. Her flesh alone was enough to kill that thing. She might seek a tool to shorten the time, but there was no reason to go looking for one under the pretense of turning the impossible into the possible!
“I’ll show you how a Weapon Master fights, demon!”
Weapon Master. The world misunderstood it as “one who can wield every weapon.” But its true meaning was “one who can make a weapon of everything.”
True to that name, the existence who even made her own body a weapon clenched her teeth and drove a straight punch. An attack controlled down to every single muscle fiber slipped past the merman’s strike and slammed into the back of its knee.
Kyaak!
The bodily structures of merman and human differed greatly. Yet if limbs were attached and a head was attached, there were inevitably places that overlapped.
Berserk aimed precisely for those. The merman’s foot, struck in the back of the knee, twisted slightly.
Thwack!
She did not stop there. Using the fact that her body was smaller than the merman’s, she continued her assault from the awkward position between its legs.
Following the grain of muscle still visible beneath the slippery hide, she gauged the position of the bones within and attacked the joints in the form she judged most rational.
Of course the merman did not simply watch. It tried, at least.
The merman was simply too large, and with size came many blind spots. Even Berserk, whose reason was being torn away strand by strand by Demon Energy, could dodge them on pure instinct once reason was discarded.
After shifting position several times and stomping on tail and arms several times, she landed on the ground once more. Then the wrist that supported her body in place of her legs twisted, shaking her whole frame.
A spinning kick drove into the reverse direction of the merman’s joint, and at last the leg folded.
Kyaaaaaaak!!!
The merman screamed and toppled sideways.
“Ahah, ahahahahaha!!!”
Berserk, who had neatly avoided the falling body, burst into mad laughter. From her crimson eyes, where no trace of reason remained, blood streamed steadily down.
“Die!!”
A merman was not a creature whose breath stopped just because one leg was severed. She leapt upward to dodge the tail’s attack, then clung stubbornly to the broken leg and tore it free.
Cartilage connecting bone to bone ripped away, muscle tore, and blood gushed in torrents. The merman screamed even harder and flailed its tail and remaining limbs.
Yet she already held a new weapon. After all, one must not forget that a merman possessed sharp claws.
Crunch!
After tearing the leg free she also ripped off the toes and swung the claws still attached to them. The moment those edges, sharp enough to cut even their original owner, became poison.
Seogeok!
The merman’s limbs were severed in an instant and its tail was half-severed as well. It was almost admirable that the thread of its life had still not snapped even then.
“Hngh.”
But it would die soon. Berserk laughed with a phlegmy voice and climbed onto the thrashing merman’s body. The claws were no longer needed.
She snapped off a protruding bone-like thing and gripped it as one would a pebble.
“Y-You! What the hell is this—!”
“This is what you wanted.”
“You damn bastard! You think I wanted this kind of dogfight!? What I wanted was……!”
“A sacred duel, and a rightful death. I know. That’s why I’m doing this.”
“…!”
“Die in the most miserable way, Scor.”
“You damn brat—”
The past brushed faintly through her mind, then was swallowed by madness and vanished.
Kwachik!
The bone fragment, faintly imbued with mana, shattered the merman’s scalp and crushed its skull.
It was similar to when she had smashed her master’s head.
Craaack.
And where that blood splattered, deep inside the concave rise in the center of the island, a reaction she did not know began.
A crack appeared on the round egg lying there.
If it was a question like that… I… I clearly want to go home. I want to go home, but…….
That doesn’t mean I can just abandon the Inquisitor or the others callously and leave. If it was simply parting ways, fine—but this would be like leaving them in a pit of fire and running off alone to save myself, wouldn’t it?
On the other hand, the path home becoming uncertain… put another way, it doesn’t mean the chance of returning disappears entirely. In other words, I might be able to go back later.
So I… I… want to choose the side that definitely saves people. Because, in my view, that’s the more right thing to do.
“Even after suffering so much until now?”
That’s true, but shouldn’t we speak properly?
The fact that I was hard and suffering is true, but that was because of those guys who hid in the back without coming out or explaining anything. If they had cooperated, I would have overcome it long ago and been all pumped up.
And yeah. Above all, is that the fault of the people of this city? Do those reasons give me the right to give up on them?
That’s not it, is it?
“…….”
So it’s fine.
I’m fine. I’m okay, so… if there’s some method, try it. You’re bringing it up now because there’s a method I can use if I delay my return, right?
“…I’m sorry.”
I didn’t answer those words. Suddenly the warmth that had been supporting my head seemed to vanish with a whoosh.
My vision, which had never opened, instead sank into darkness.
Deathbringer pressed the goggles Meister had given him to his eyes and clenched his fist tight.
Should he aim for the Great Demon, the structure, or the sealed person? After long deliberation the choice he made seemed to be having a fair effect.
The structure that looked like a temple no longer spat out demons. There had been meaning in risking their lives to get this far.
“How did it go!?”
“The demon nest has gone silent!”
“That’s great!”
He had not aimed for the Great Demon because the target was small and there was a high chance it could block the attack.
He had not chosen the sealed one because the strike might go beyond breaking the seal and hit the person inside as well, and it was unclear whether that person would immediately become fighting strength.
But what about the structure that had been endlessly pouring out soldiers?
There had also been a chance the attack would not work, but if it did, they could cut off the reinforcement of the demons’ forces. It was a risk they could just about handle, with a clearly guaranteed result.
So he had chosen it, and fortunately it had worked.
An excellent sign.
“Uh…….”
Well, the flying-type demons all rising at once toward their location as if under the Great Demon’s orders was not such good news.
“I expected it, but we’re fucking screwed.”
“Great Demon or underlings.”
“Underlings. But there are more flying types than I thought.”
“We’re fucked.”
Still, they had expected it, so the two of them did not drown in panic. They had only expected it and had not prepared—natural enough; aside from a bit of personal skill they were ordinary people—so their lives were a concern, but still.
“There’s one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.”
“Is good news even possible here?”
“I think I can fire one more time.”
“That’s fucking great news.”
“But I probably won’t be ready before those things arrive. No matter how hard I try.”
“That’s shitty bad news.”
Feeling as though he were alternating between cold and hot water, Deathbringer moved his body first. Of course, even if the chance of surviving here was close to zero, he could not just sit and die.
Deathbringer preferred living a little more than dying, and Meister was even more that sort of person.
They moved as promised, packing their things, in order to live somehow.
The first floor and the basement, the waterway whose drainage had been blocked by the collapsing building. All sorts of places became their escape routes.
Kwaang!
“Fuck, they’re crazy fast!”
“Damn it. The water’s risen!”
“What?! You said even if we blew the waterway it wouldn’t fill here!”
“When did I ever! I said there was a high chance it wouldn’t!”
“That’s the same thing!”
“It’s different! Completely different, got it?! Do you think 100% and 80% are the same!?”
They moved only through spaces where the flying-type demons could not properly stick their heads in, because they did not want those things to peck their heads and kill them.
Due to a slight miscalculation some of the waterways were already filled with water, but they could manage even that well enough.
They cradled the arcane device that was as good as their lifeline like a precious child and dashed through the waterways. The demons perched above clacked their beaks and tried to peck them to death.
“This fucking…….”
But even that escape of theirs was eventually blocked. The flying-type demons finally collapsed the building and sealed their escape route.
On top of that, as if digging their own graves, the waterway they had blown to help the Hero struggling in the lava began to tighten the noose around their lives.
The water was rising.
“There’s a hole over there. Let’s bolt through it.”
“Good call.”
They could not stay in a rising waterway. If the device got wet it would be disastrous, and they were far too exposed to the demons.
For now only the large flying types were present and could not catch them, but if something small enough to enter here arrived it would be a real problem.
So they entered a building through the hole. It was a place where the waterway and a house basement had been separated by only a single stone wall, yet parts of that wall had crumbled so they could get in.
Bang! Kwaang!
Of course the demons were not blind; the moment the two entered that building they raised a huge ruckus. The first and second floors made of wood would probably be smashed to pieces and collapse in no time.
Thud, thud!
But these houses had been built tightly packed against one another. Deathbringer and Meister smashed the walls first with perfect coordination. The neighboring house welcomed them.
“Keep going, further!”
They leapt through windows across alleys so narrow only one person could barely pass—hard to avoid the demons’ eyes, but better than throwing their lives away—and occasionally smashed more walls as they moved through several more houses.
It was fortunate that the flying-type demons’ eyes were fixed only on the first building they had entered.
At least for this moment they caught their breath.
The two men collapsed onto the corridor floor of the house and supplied oxygen to the pale skin beneath.
“That was a chase I never want to do again.”
“…I don’t particularly want to agree with you, but this time I feel the same.”
Why were they filming a chase scene with demons in ordinary human bodies? Even as they writhed in self-loathing, they did not regret it by saying “We should’ve just run.”
“…This time, hah. I’ll admit it. Even a day when I get help from an intelligence-deficient guy like you has come.”
“Either insult me or praise me, pick one. Still, well, you did pretty well yourself.”
What they had just accomplished was something only they could do, it was their best, and it was something they could proudly boast about to anyone.
“So that’s why I’m saying this—let’s fire one more time.”
“What, you bastard?”
“You said you could fire one more time.”
“You want to do what we just did again? You’ve really lost it.”
“What we just did helped the Hero and the city, but it wasn’t enough to completely turn the tide of battle, was it? We have to do it one more time.”
“Hah, who doesn’t know that…….”
Meister made a face as if fed up with Deathbringer’s proposal, then soon clutched his head. His reason had in fact reached a similar judgment.
“…Damn it. Fine, do it! The chance of getting out of here alive is already close to zero anyway, so what does one more try change?”
If they were going to die anyway they ought to burn properly; if they backed down out of fear they would achieve neither one thing nor the other.
Meister’s pride stood upright. For Deathbringer, who had given up on surviving from the start, it was good news.
“Go up. We need to take position in a high building.”
“Don’t worry.”
They adjusted their grip on the things they had carefully carried this far and set foot on the stairs. Luckily the place they were in now was the tallest in the vicinity, so there was no need to search for a higher building.
Settling by the third-floor window, Meister began reassembling the equipment.
“Two amplifiers are wrecked so it won’t have the same power as before. Stability’s fucked too—it might not even fire, or it might explode. We could just draw every demon’s attention and gain nothing. You ready for that?”
“Fuck, I was ready for that shit when we came up here.”
“Good.”
Every time one amplifier broke, the power dropped disastrously. And only three amplifiers remained. They had to accept that they could not produce proper power.
Compared to the first shot, the difference would be like a sword and a toothpick.
“Target, the Great Demon?”
“…No, let’s aim for that instead.”
“What? The seal?”
“Even if we aim for the Great Demon I don’t think we’ll get much out of it, so we should at least try freeing one person.”
“I don’t think freeing that side will get us much either.”
Meister clicked his tongue as he looked at the place Deathbringer indicated.
“But, fine. I’ll trust your judgment once, I guess.”
Deathbringer’s judgment had mostly been correct on the way here. Therefore he decided to trust him this time as well.
The completed barrel aimed at the cocoon sealing the person. So that the person would not be hit and melt, the trajectory was set slightly off the person themselves.
“Then let’s g—!?”
Kwaang!
And before he could activate the device, the building shook. “Damn it! They found us!” Deathbringer drew his dark sword and thrust it forward. Craaack! The next instant the building wall was torn away.
“Don’t worry about me and shoot!”
If he turned the barrel even now he might be able to kill the demon right in front of them.
But Deathbringer had already refused that in advance.
Kwaang!
So Meister had no choice but to respect that decision. With an explosive roar a beam of light stretched out across the city.
[Ah, finally.]
Someone awoke.