Evidence (3)
“…I warn you in advance: from this moment on, I will not save anyone who falls behind.”
The Hero swung herself onto Frederick’s back and found her thoughts drifting unbidden.
Are you fighting even now? Are you throwing your body into the fray again just to save people?
“Therefore, devotees—guard your own lives with your own hands.”
…Even though none of your devotion is ever repaid?
“We move.”
Devotion was never something one offered in hope of reward. She knew that. There were moments when one simply had to sacrifice because it was right. This was one of those moments, and the ones still to come would be the same.
Hiiiiing!
“O God…….”
And yet—and yet…….
“Your servant stands here.”
She pictured the empty prison. 『 .』 Was it right that devotion so completely unrewarded should even exist in this world?
“Bestow rightful honor upon those who sacrifice.”
She whispered the words atop the thundering horse.
Two hours to Munmunt. For those two hours, let the city hold. Let it not fall. Let as many souls as possible remain within reach of an outstretched hand.
“Grant courage equal to those who refuse to yield.”
And may the god of this land not abandon them. May You not turn Your face from us. Every living thing of this earth, Your young children, Your faithful servants—
“Show unmistakable hope to those who strive to save another.”
To even one pitiful soul.
“Please… declare that devotion holds some worth.”
Please.
“Why would I give up?”
I clenched Latel tighter against the coaxing whisper at my ear.
“What the hell did I stay for if I’m supposed to quit now?”
Scrape. The thing that barely passed for a hilt ground against my palm.
“Or what—did the developers hard-code that I can’t kill that pig before those people die? Did they? Did they nail it down?”
[Who knows. I doubt even a god would be crazy enough to lock that in.]
“Then we’re good.”
At the same time I forced Demon Energy into it in thick, stubborn streams. The white mucus that had been worming its way through the slits of Behemoth’s eyelids no longer stabbed at the eye itself.
“If it isn’t locked behind an unkillable flag, a gamer will kill it.”
Instead the substance filled every gap between eyeball and hide. Behemoth tossed its head in irritation, but it meant nothing. Neither Latel nor I—welded fast to it—were coming free from a mere shake.
“So this thing can die too.”
Slice!
A cockroach that had crawled this far lost its head to the amber blade. Latel, which had seemed ready to expand forever, finally felt full; the empty spaces inside had packed tight. Roughly half the eyeball was covered now.
[This is……]
All that remained was to pour more Demon Energy into Latel and set it alight.
I remembered the demon’s words—that rage would naturally birth flame. Conveniently I had an overflowing stock of emotion ready to burn; no shortage there.
[Unpleasant.]
The poison I had never been able to vent on the child, yet could never store forever either, spilled out like tears and grew heavy as lava. A layer of pure malice was plastered over the whole of it.
[It took me a hundred years just to control fire.]
Flame began to creep slowly beneath Behemoth’s eyelid. Cold seepage flared into sudden heat that gently, relentlessly warmed the moisture composing the eye.
“Call off the bugs right now or I’ll roast the whole damn eyeball.”
Kuuoooooooh!!!
Unable to endure, the eye finally forced the lid open and screamed.
“You hear me, you miserable pig bastard? Call the bugs off!!”
Did I feel sorry for it? Not particularly. Who told it to unleash insects and kill people? Who told it to kill people right in front of me? Who made it so damn hard that this was the only method left?
“Bugs! Get rid of them!!!”
I glared at the eyeball that Latel had turned almost pure white. Objectively the damage it had dealt me directly was minor, and its toughness wasn’t really its fault—but I didn’t care.
It was one of humanity’s great enemies that had to die, and I needed somewhere to pour my anger. That was all that mattered.
[That beast can’t understand words, you know.]
Of course this thing wasn’t the true source of my fury, and the rage I was dumping would not actually leave me refreshed when it was done.
Still, it was fine. Even if not everything could be emptied out, it didn’t matter.
One shovelful at a time—eventually even this sediment would hit bottom.
Boom!
While I was busy wrecking Behemoth’s eye as a stress toy, the creature finally tried to drive its own head into the earth. With those short, thick legs it couldn’t reach my perch, so it meant to scrape me off by grinding its skull against the ground.
Boom!
There was one thing it hadn’t accounted for. Behemoth’s head was built so that its tusks jutted farther out than its forehead.
Boom!
The tusks always struck first, shattering patches of earth and sending numbing shocks upward. Each time, my clothes and hair leapt once.
[Adjust Latel’s transparency. You’ll still need to keep boring through the place you already pierced.]
“…What the hell is this thing even made of?”
What kind of material let you regulate opacity like that? I asked in a flattened voice. The demon floating nearby tossed the answer out casually.
[My ribs. And magic.]
“Gross.”
Whoosh!
Gross, but the functions were too good to refuse. I swallowed the visceral disgust and raised Latel’s transparency. Behemoth’s enormous pupil appeared. [There.] The puncture was right beside it.
Thud! My body shot forward as I seized the amber sword. The moment I set myself to thrust, it would swivel the eye away—so the strike on that single point had to be a true ambush.
In an instant the Latel covering the scratch withdrew; the amber edge slammed down into it.
Shlick!
At last several membranes beneath the sclera were pierced. The vitreous humor, hard as frozen pork belly, welcomed my blade.
[…You’re handling Latel rather well.]
Even while driving the sword deeper I stretched part of Latel into a long tentacle to anchor my body. The eyeball wasn’t supporting me like ground; it stood like a wall. Without the hold I would have fallen.
Slice! Even in this moment a cockroach lunged; I pulled a dagger free and cut it into three pieces that tumbled away.
Guoooooh, uoooooh!!!
While I carved through a few more cockroaches, the stabbed beast reared a foreleg high and smashed it into the earth. KRA-BOOM! Nonexistent cheek fat quivered; my clothes flapped wildly. It was a bungee jump without the cord.
Kuuuuung!
But the greater problem was the wall. The earthquake-level shockwave that rolled across the ground brought another section of the fortifications crashing down; every kind of roar erupted from the city. Human screams came free of charge.
Thud, thud, thud.
Misfortune never arrives alone. Behemoth itself now charged straight toward the city. All that careful luring to drag it away had become meaningless in a single instant.
Damn it. The sheer loathsomeness of a hard-to-kill enemy and the frustration at the hopeless reality surged up together.
“Hey—how tough is this thing?”
[I don’t know what you’re planning, but if it were harder than Behemoth I wouldn’t have undone the protective cocoon in the first place. And if it breaks, repairing it eats a disgusting amount of Demon Energy, so don’t try unless you have to.]
…Then it was useless. I abandoned the idea of spreading Latel into a broad wall. A wall that shatters has no point.
“Elasticity?”
[Not great.]
If the give was poor, spreading it like a net to bleed off speed would be difficult too. I bit my lip as the remaining distance shrank.
“Is the difference in hardness so big it’ll shatter the second the charge hits?”
[…No idea. I’ve never tested that.]
“Useless bastard.”
[Harsh.]
It isn’t even made of my ribs—should I just risk breaking Latel and try a wall? I kept turning the problem over while turning one of Behemoth’s eyes into well-done steak. Nothing useful surfaced.
Stripped of the power to sever and pulverize anything in a single stroke, I was a man who could do nothing.
“O God.”
Yes. I could kill enemies, but I was not suited to protecting anyone.
“I am here—raise a wall that bars evil.”
Unlike the red-haired youth standing over there.
KRAANG!
It was a kind of thorn. Wrapping the wall yet thrusting to a single sharp point—clearly a thorn.
Guoooooooh!
At the same time it was a wall.
The monster that had been charging to crush the city—Erysichthon—was blocked by that thin-yet-thick barrier and thrashed its head wildly. A golden spike had already driven deep into the junction of its thick neck and leg.
“Cough.”
How could the one who alone withstood that overwhelming mass not cough blood?
Yet that was all. The person who single-handedly stopped a monster the size of a large village merely spat once and lifted their head.
The vessel expanded through repeated breaking, shattering, and rolling had helped. Red hair fluttered gently in the wind.
“I declare this place a sacred domain from this moment.”
The thorn buried in the great beast’s flesh quietly began to take root. The Holy Power that had formed the wall seemed to pool and drive roots inward, as though the whole of it meant to invade the creature’s interior.
“Evil—I will punish you for trespassing upon the sacred domain.”
Guuuuuuuuuh.
The plague-beast scattered swarms of insects and howled. Even a brute whose reason had scraped the floor could understand its own death, and so it wept.
To live even a little longer, to feed the endless hunger, Erysichthon ordered its thralls to devour every living thing nearby.
“Gah!”
“Aaaagh!”
“……!”
The Hero frowned. However much stronger she had become, her hands were still small; she could choose only one thing at a time.
“S-save me…….”
“I don’t want to die…….”
Punish the evil, or save the pitiful?
From every direction the voices pressed in; she tightened her grip on shield and mace. Something had to be discarded.
“Purify them!”
Something always had to be discarded.
Alone, it had always been so.
“Fulfill the duty given to you!”
Ah. Even through blurring vision the red-haired youth saw the one who burned with undimmed brilliance, and his mouth fell open.
Though mud and blood might veil them, the one who simultaneously bore the pitch-black of evil and the gray that had never quite become good still blazed white as ever.
“I’ll kill the demon!!”
Ah—if only you had stood here as pure evil.
If the Demon Energy I felt and your essence had been one and the same.
Would I have been a little more at ease then?
I never wanted to see that gold again, yet today I could not understand why it felt so welcome. I laughed as if I might cry at the curtain that had stopped Behemoth—then the face visible through the gaps made my expression harden.
“…Kid’s gotten skinny.”
Didn’t those temple bastards feed you properly? Why are you half the size you used to be? That round face that still had baby fat—why is it so sharp now?
[You’re seriously fretting over that right n—haah…….]
But there was no time yet to worry over the Inquisitor’s condition. The fight was unfinished.
I watched Behemoth retreat from the Holy Power and adjusted my grip on the amber blade already half-buried in its eye. The insects on the walls were being purged in real time; the people too were healing under the gold. Nothing left to hold me back.
I ripped the sword free, then prepared to drive it down again. The creature rolled its eye desperately to dodge, but short of flipping it a full hundred and eighty degrees that was impossible. All the way to the guard, the blade sank into Behemoth’s eye.
Boom, boom! Like a maddened bull Behemoth heaved its whole body, then began to turn completely around. Kuuuuuung. The massive form broke into a run toward the desert.
[The pig bastard… realizes it won’t work and tries to tuck tail.]
But the eye was already pierced. I shoved Latel deeper into the socket and thrust my hand in after it. Inventory. The tool that would swallow anything it touched the moment I willed it whisked Behemoth’s vitreous humor into some other space and dumped it behind my back.
[More than that, Gretchen… I always think it, but you really know how to use an inventory.]
In an instant Behemoth’s eye collapsed. Put another way: a foothold-sized space had opened inside the orbit.
I did not hesitate. I stepped inside. The tough sclera was slick underfoot; smooth flesh showed here and there. I considered which spot to stab to reach the brain.
[…Maybe stop here?]
Just as I was gauging my remaining mana and the brain’s location to pour more force into Latel, the demon asked quietly.
“Why.”
[The original goal was to free that city from threat, not to kill Behemoth.]
“So after coming this far I’m supposed to let it go?”
You yourself spat pure contempt and loathing—“bugs this,” “bastard that”—and now you want to quit? After we’ve already crushed Envy and Greed, I don’t think you’re suddenly planning to switch back to the demon side.
I flicked a glance at its face, trying to read the real intent. “If you’re going to persuade me, give me the truth.” Even to my own ears the voice that clipped past the demon was bleak.
[To kill this thing now you’ll have to burn every last scrap of strength. And the Hero is already in that city.]
Ah—so that was all. I poured a little more Demon Energy into Latel. Thrum. Mana packed to the absolute limit made the weapon vibrate.
[Just checking, Gretchen—you’re not under the delusion that the Hero will spare you, are you? If you are, please reconsider. You know this yourself: your current position makes choosing life… difficult.]
The vibration intensified.
[…Of course, if you want to die by the Hero’s hand and go back, fine. Can’t be helped. Poor Faust will still carry the mark of our contract and get flung into Hell without any hope of salvation—but if you truly want to return, well.]
Yet the hand that should have thrown the thing had already missed its moment.
[So what’s it going to be, Gretchen? Will you pour even the strength you’d need to run into killing this thing?]
I stared at that vicious tongue.
A demon was, without question, still a demon.