Don't Do This (6)
The moment Rookwan's concise explanation finished, the Inquisitor sprinted straight for the central garden.
Every civilian she met along the way she left in the care of the thieves. They would find the people safe rooms—anything to keep them from wandering outside the castle and becoming demon fodder.
At any rate: the entrance to the central garden.
She stepped over the heap of corpses and the shattered door into the reeking courtyard. The first thing she saw were the pits dug where the garden beds had been torn out. Blood drawn from who knew how many people had pooled into a lake.
"Demon Knight?"
She tore her gaze free with effort and scanned the rest of the garden. In the dark beyond the reach of the braziers, a faint silhouette shifted.
The tall frame and the outline of the sword across its back were unmistakably the Demon Knight's.
"Are you all right?"
Yet her instincts screamed with unease. Why was the Demon Energy from his right arm flooding his entire body?
Shield raised, the Inquisitor took half a careful step forward. It was a wise decision.
"Hhh."
A thunderous crash!
"……!"
In the blink of an eye the blade came down. Had her shield been lowered, the strike would have been nearly impossible to answer in time.
"Demon Knight……!"
At the same moment he entered the firelight, and his form finally became clear.
The Demon Knight was wreathed head to toe in red-and-black energy, gripping his two-handed sword in one hand.
His eyes, stained by the reddish cast of the flames, were impossible to call either gray or crimson.
Blood speckled beneath ash-gray cheekbones ran down his face like tears.
"Annoying……."
"Demon Knight, come to your senses!"
"It's so annoying I could die……."
Another blow. She raised her shield. A heavy impact hammered against it. Even with Holy Power layered over the steel, her wrist went numb.
"Demon Knight!"
She called his name again. This time there was a flicker of response. His left hand pressed to his own forehead as he bent at the waist—the posture of someone nursing a splitting headache.
The decisive difference between a headache patient and him, however, was the sword still leveled at the Inquisitor and never withdrawn.
"Hh, nnh."
With a sound like weeping the Demon Knight staggered. The Demon Energy swirling around him like heat haze swelled and shrank by turns.
"Come on, focus…… but it's annoying. I said it's annoying."
The edge of the two-hander began to flush the color of blood.
"Can't I just kill them……?"
Hearing those words, the Inquisitor abandoned every remaining doubt.
The Demon Knight was not in his right mind. That vile demon was clearly trying to seize his body!
"Demon Knight, don't worry about me! I can hold on!"
What she had to do was simple.
Trust him, and buy time.
"So don't you lose!"
Until he crushed the demon inside him and woke completely.
A whipcrack of motion!
The instant her cry ended, the Demon Knight's head snapped up again.
The Demon Energy that had been receding erupted, surging up through his hair like a crown—or like horns.
"I told you it was annoying."
Blood-spattered red outer corners of his eyes curved as if he were crying.
"Why? Why do you keep pissing me off?"
The gray that never looked white even in sunlight, yet turned so pale in the dark, was gone from the man—and for a moment he seemed almost awkward.
But when the firelight stained his ashen cheeks scarlet, when the lips that had always drawn only straight lines twisted up like broken glass—
that awkwardness transformed into something utterly alien.
"It's your fault. All of you."
The Inquisitor gathered her Holy Power. She had already wrung it dry to the limit once before, but she ignored that.
The pain Holy Power inflicted was mental fatigue alone; it did not truly exhaust the body. She could still fight.
No—she had to fight.
"So just die."
If she didn't, who would bring the Demon Knight back?
A jarring impact!
She raised her shield and caught the sword. The moment she tried to swing her mace for even a single counter, the knight slipped aside and drove a thrust home. The blood-dyed blade, of course, dripped with sickening Demon Energy.
"O God!"
Would she take that strike? No. She could not.
"Be with me!"
Through the pain crashing over her she forced out the power her god had granted. She wrenched mace and shield into the path of the attack, then unleashed a wave of Holy Power straight ahead.
The Demon Knight's eyes narrowed a fraction; he recovered his sword and drove it into the earth. Demonic force erupted in every direction and collided with her Holy Power.
A grinding shriek of pressure.
For an instant Demon Energy and Holy Power locked in a savage contest, as if steel had met steel. Their quantities were nearly equal—that was the only reason.
Both bodies finally skidded backward in opposite directions.
But there was no room for relief. The Demon Knight granted not even a heartbeat before launching his next assault.
The blood-red blade carved the air; the tremendous Demon Energy clinging to it stretched long and split the world from bottom to top.
A deafening crash!
She had no strength left to dodge. The Inquisitor met the blow with her shield.
Demon Energy focused into a single line was razor-keen; a shallow gouge scored the shield's face.
And the assault did not end there. The sword that had been raised high now raked down on a slant.
The Inquisitor rolled across the ground to escape the diagonally bisected world.
With her usual gear she might have blocked again, but cloth and a cheap medium shield made guarding the more costly choice.
Her red hair whipped through the dust.
Seizing the opening, the Demon Knight charged like a falling star. Still half-risen from the roll, she threw up her shield—one hand braced on the earth, the other raising the shield to cover her body.
A crushing blow slammed down onto it. The face she saw over the rim was twisted with something ugly.
The Demon Knight was not a man who made that face.
"You think I'll lose?!!"
She roared the words and prayed. White light burst outward from her center and hurled the Demon Knight back.
At the same instant the mace in her right hand smashed into the ground before her.
A heavy boom.
A stretch of earth three meters wide and fifteen meters long heaved; pure white light erupted from the soil in successive waves.
It was a technique the Inquisitor herself had devised while watching the Demon Knight fight.
"Ghh!"
It was unfinished and unpracticed, terrible on efficiency—but at least it could strike an enemy who had been driven away.
The surging light washed over the Demon Knight even as he was shoved back, proving as much.
Behind him, even the iron-plated pits driven into the earth listed to one side.
"Annoying……!"
But the Demon Knight was no soft target to fall to a single technique.
Pouring out Demon Energy to resist the Holy Power, he sprang forward at once. Steel rang against steel as shield and sword met again.
In the grinding contest the Inquisitor's shield angled by subtle degrees and began to push him back.
A hollow clang!
Keeping the blade locked against the shield, she threw him past her. The Demon Knight landed with feline grace—but her mace had already struck the ground.
A cascading roar!
Like fountains rising in sequence, light erupted from her position outward and slammed into him once more.
A sizzling hiss.
Corruption meeting Holy Power burned away in coils of smoke.
"Urgh."
Then the Demon Knight pressed a hand to his brow.
"No…… if this keeps up……."
Staggering, muttering under his breath—exactly the look of someone fighting to reclaim himself.
Now. The Inquisitor lunged to subdue him. With her armor gone her defense was far lower, but the lightness let her close the distance with ease.
Steel crashed!
"Ghh!"
She had meant to shatter a rib or an arm, but a man so steeped in battle would never yield so easily.
A sword raised on pure reflex met the mace head-on.
Yet power prepared from the start and power hauled up too late were never equal—especially when a blunt weapon faced a blade.
The Demon Knight's body went flying at last. Even midair he found the presence of mind for a recovery, spinning once to land as lithe as a beast.
"Nnngh."
Then he staggered again. A voice thick with agony scraped his throat while that massive hand clenched his own forehead as if trying to crush his skull.
The black haze streaming from his body grew denser still.
"Hup!"
The Inquisitor meant to keep pressing while he struggled for control. Break an arm or a leg and restraining him would be far simpler—sound judgment.
This approach, however, was a mistake.
"AAAAAAH!"
As the Demon Knight roared, Demon Energy detonated outward in a sphere. The force shredded air and earth alike.
Blood-lines scored even the Inquisitor's cheek—this despite the Holy Power she had frantically raised in resistance.
She skidded backward, boots gouging deep furrows in the hard-packed dirt.
"Kill, die, die, kill?"
In that interval the man who had covered most of his face with his left hand curled his fingers.
A wet, tearing sound.
His nails finally raked open the skin of his own forehead. With a rip the eyepatch over his right eye tore free.
"Ah."
Where she had expected emptiness or a glass eye sat a perfectly whole eye.
Neither red nor the gray of his left—an eye the color of flower petals beaten by rain until the water was gone.
"I want to go home."
Demon Energy whipped around him like a whirlpool. No longer heat haze—now fog.
A rending crack.
"……!"
It happened in an instant. In that single instant the sword, spewing Demon Energy, carved a twenty-meter radius. Even the shield the Inquisitor had barely raised could not withstand that slash; it was on the verge of being sheared through.
"Ghh!"
Though halved, the shield still did the least of its duty. The Inquisitor pressed a hand to the wound carved across her abdomen.
Without the shield that cut would have gone far deeper.
"He's gotten stronger……!"
She abandoned healing mid-cast and rolled desperately across the ground.
A whisper of air. No longer even the sound of something being cut—only black trajectories etched for a heartbeat in empty space.
Seen head-on they were mere lines; only from above or below did the crescent surface of each Chamgyeok appear.
The Inquisitor discarded the shield, now severed from the forearm section down. With that much gone there was no point wearing it.
Another whisper.
Without the slightest gap a sword-stroke lanced out. Eyes wide, she dodged. A fraction late—several strands of hair sheared away.
But there was no time to breathe. The strikes kept coming in unbroken succession.
This one she could not evade. Judgment made in a flash, the Inquisitor hastily raised a barrier of Holy Power. The barrier shuddered under a single blow.
A slicing tear!
Half a beat behind the flying slash the Demon Knight himself closed in and swung; the sturdy barrier she had always taken pride in parted like paper.
Only the multiple layered barriers she had slammed Holy Power into saved her—without them her head would have split along with the wards.
"Hah!"
Losing the shield as cover brought many disadvantages. Yet it was not only disadvantage.
In exchange for the shield she could now swing her mace in counterattack without difficulty.
A sharp clang!
The flanges of her mace met the blood-red blade. The collision was much like those before.
The difference this time was the follow-up. The Demon Knight's left hand—empty while he swung the sword one-handed—raked upward through the air from below.
A wet slash!
Blood sprayed across the Inquisitor's shoulder. With a final clang her strength shoved the Demon Knight back; she drove a kick into his solar plexus.
"Kh."
He had sheathed his nails in Demon Energy to strike. Considering the corpses she had met in the corridor, she should have anticipated it. Her mistake.
But no time was granted to dwell on mistakes and correct them.
The Demon Knight swung his sword from low to high and hurled Demon Energy like a tidal wave. Even a moment's delay and her body would have been torn mercilessly in two.
The Inquisitor gritted her teeth and drove her mace into the earth. Holy Power erupted from that point and collided with the Demon Energy.
A massive explosion rose with a cloud of dust.
A slicing rush of air!
One second, two. The dust veiling her sight suddenly fractured like shattered cubes sliding out of alignment.
"……!"
In that heartbeat—how many times had the Demon Knight swung?
Despite her defense, her left ear and a swath of hair were gone; her right shoulder was laid open to the upper chest. A grazing wound on her thigh cut deep enough to show bone.
"I—! I promised! I would hold on until He returns!!"
Wounds could not stop her. The searing price of the Holy Power she had raised finally burst from her nose for no reason at all.
As if in answer, every wound beneath her torn cloth healed as she advanced. A brief realization flickered through the Inquisitor's mind.
"O God, look upon Your little lamb!"
If no amount of compressed, densified Holy Power could block those Demon Energy slashes—then better to be cut and heal.
"Therefore deliver the wretched!"
A golden tide poured out in every direction. A whisper of steel. A slash of Demon Energy compressed again and again carved the world as if to answer it.
It did not matter. She protected only her vital organs and let her body be cut.
The Demon Knight's blade severed so cleanly at the joints that reattachment and recovery were easy.
"Hyaaah!!!"
And at last, the moment her body reached the Demon Knight's very front—
his hand rose as if to stop her, lifting the sword.
But the arm never finished the motion. Hand and blade froze unnaturally in midair.
A crushing impact!
The mace found its mark; the Demon Knight folded at the waist and went flying.
Deathbringer soothed the people fretting over the earth that thundered as if in an earthquake.
Of course, coaxing people was hardly his specialty, and the work sometimes filled him with disgust.
Especially when dealing with those whose speech still carried the polish of better days—more precisely, the polish of former wealth.
"G-get me somewhere safer! I deserve more protection than the rest of them!"
If demons were what he hated second-most and the Church third, then first place went precisely to upper-class specimens like this one.
"I'll pay whatever you want!"
Deathbringer fixed a cold stare on the man who had introduced himself as a merchant-guild master. Deserve more protection? What a load of crap. The colder thoughts behind the look were free of charge.
"Shut your damn mouth right now or I'll throw you outside myself. Best stop while you're ahead."
"W-what did you just—!"
"Can't you read the room? We're the ones holding your life-string right now."
It's been a while since I actually wanted to kill someone.
He realized afresh that, ever since joining this journey, he had not once done the work of a "Deathbringer."
Well—obvious, really. If he ever tried to fulfill that calling, the Inquisitor would be the first to grab him by the throat.
After all, a Deathbringer's work was to kill the wicked the law could not touch—especially the powerful and the rich.
"If you don't want to be tossed out as demon chow, shut it."
He rose, nerves frayed, mimicking the Demon Knight's high-handed tone. He was already irritated; having the type he hated most kicking up a fuss set his insides boiling.
"Evacuation finished?"
"For now. Still checking for anyone else who got caught."
They had wandered the castle hunting for a safe place, then—after beating or bribing a few jailers—found and inspected this one.
The underground prison inside the castle.
Hard for flying demons to enter, few guards left inside, and no corpses to look at. Perfect.
"The kids are all right, yeah?"
"For now, yeah. They're scared half to death from the shock, but they're okay."
It had been pure luck the children were already locked in the cells.
Bad for their minds, maybe—but if they'd had to herd those little ones somewhere safe on top of everyone else, their heads would have exploded.
"Hey, trash. You sure there's nowhere else people got grabbed?"
"At least not in the castle. That much I'm sure of."
A pirate—one of those who had watched Bipurit turn into a monster, the Demon Knight become a butcher, and the demon-contractors die off until the demons themselves started rampaging without friend or foe—answered with a grumble.
With every pillar of support gone, they had thrown themselves on this side begging only to live.
Of course, even without demon contracts they had still cooperated with demon-worshippers, so there was no call to look on them kindly…… but right now they needed every hand they could get, even a cat's.
Having been forced to take them in, Deathbringer narrowed his eyes.
"More importantly—you're certain? You'll at least spare us the death sentence?"
"Yeah."
Like hell. As if they had any such authority. He had just tossed out a convenient lie because they were in a hurry. For a promise to mean anything, they would need at least the thick-skulled Hero's consent.
And if he had to guess, that man would never forgive them. The surviving powers of Ayu Hin wouldn't either.
"Fine, then……."
A massive explosion cut Deathbringer off mid-sentence.
"What the hell was that!"
"O-outside!"
The pirate and thief who had been standing watch outside burst into the corridor where the others waited, shouting.
"The main force is here!"
Deathbringer's face lit up.
The hair sheared away so faintly seemed to jolt a scrap of consciousness free.
So I did not dodge the attack coming for me. If I could not stop myself, I at least had to allow someone else to stop me.
But.
But.
It hurts too much.
It hurts too damn much.
…Why do I have to hurt?
This is unfair.