Don't Do This (8)
Ayu Hin was no port city. It did sit beside the sea, true enough, but the lay of the land made riding overland from the Hidden Port faster than taking a ship.
Still, when your numbers ran to three hundred and you had no horses at all, that calculation flipped on its head.
So the pirates of the harbor lowered their ladders of their own accord—the ladders of the ships that would carry the people of the Order and the mages as far as the waters off Ayu Hin.
"What got into you, heading out like this?"
Baramson dropped himself onto the gunwale with a thud. From here, Ayu Hin was a distant shape perched on the high ground.
"Never figured you'd be the first to offer to ferry anyone—least of all the Order."
There was one other passenger aboard. Baramson held out a bottle of liquor to the boss, Rahong—something he had quietly stashed away at the harbor.
"You… you said it yourself."
She had to know that already, yet Rahong took the bottle without pointing it out. From the bronze flask came a liquor so fierce it seemed to pour with a spiteful little bounce.
"Can't lose our families again… can't make them live on the ashes of everything that burned… I just decided that was right."
She let her wrinkled eyelids sink a fraction lower.
"The children haven't done anything wrong."
"…What's gotten into you, you crooked old hag? Giving up your stubborn streak?"
"You think you won't get old?"
"I'll outlive you, at least."
"Fine. Live long. Live long and go watch more of this shitty world."
"You cursing me?"
Idle talk was perfect for covering over a troubled heart and a well of sorrow. Liquor, too, was a way of letting those buried feelings run off before they could pile up.
"…You think they succeeded?"
"How the hell would I know?"
Baramson took the bottle back and shoved the liquid into his own mouth. He ignored the healer's order not to drink after taking a sword through the gut.
"Harbor's already a wreck. If we can't even kill Bipurit's lot on top of that, we're finished anyway."
Among pirates, few ever listened well to a doctor's advice.
"Captain!"
Someone in the crow's nest bellowed. Rahong's eyes narrowed to a savage line.
"Stop making a racket. You want the demons to—"
"A blue beacon's gone up from Ayu Hin!"
"……!"
"Bipurit is dead!"
That was news worth shouting about.
"Hah!"
The Inquisitor's eyes opened and she was already sitting up. The breath she dragged in was cold and, at the same time, heavy.
Her lungs—or her ribs, or every muscle wrapped around them—ached with a stubborn, deep-set stiffness.
"The Demon Knight?!"
This was no time to yield to pain. She swept her gaze around in a rush. Hair from one side of her head slapped her cheek as her head turned, and the scene around her came into focus.
A prison cell. One made almost cozy.
"……?"
Her first hypothesis was that she had been too late.
But if she had truly been too late, she would never have woken at all. Hypothesis dismissed.
Then had the Demon Knight been subdued? With even her fallen, how?
No—before that: what of the others?
She checked herself first. Her life was still firmly attached. From that alone she judged that the worst had not come to pass, and she pushed herself fully upright.
A soft cotton quilt slid aside and fell to the floor. There was no proper bed in the cell, but quilts had been stacked layer upon layer in its place, with another to cover her.
"Ah. There they are."
Her eternal partners—mace and shield—leaned neatly against one wall of the cell as well.
Her armor, which she had left with the main force, lay carefully arranged on a spread cloth. Truly, it did not look like the worst case.
"Is Bipurit really dead?"
"You saw the head on the pike."
"No… I just can't quite believe that monster was Bipurit…"
Only when the chatter of people talking outside the corridor reached her did she start blinking in earnest—and decide, for the moment, to get dressed.
She had been leaving her armor behind for the sake of speed and infiltration, but that only made her miss it more.
"When will the Hero wake?"
"The priests say the injuries aren't serious."
She listened to the idle talk drifting in as she donned her armor at speed. Even without a squire, the iron knight was fully armed in under ten minutes.
"And that monster—they're really just going to seal—"
Creeeak.
She pushed the open iron-barred door. The metal shriek of something poorly maintained cut across the corridor.
The chatter from a little farther down cut off.
"Ah—Hero!"
"You've awakened!"
The Inquisitor watched figures of the Order scramble toward her. Calling them "figures" did not mean there were many of them.
"I—I'll go report!"
One of them even turned on his heel and ran. The remaining two reached her.
"Yes. Ah."
She gave a light nod to those who had rushed up, then checked the important things first.
"How stands the situation?"
The Demon Knight, the rogue, those who had come running to her aid—everything that had unfolded after she fell.
At her question the priests hesitated a moment. She still had little experience trading words with people and could not catch fine shades of feeling, but nothing about it felt especially grim.
"First… we will explain from the beginning."
"I am listening."
At last they began.
How the main force had arrived with such timing, why there had been so few of them, the exact numbers of dead and wounded, how the aftermath had been handled, and more.
"With the help of the harbor pirates we were able to come up this far quickly. We had considered the chance they might turn hostile, but they were all quite cooperative."
"As we entered the city we saw the enemy in confusion and split our forces to subdue them."
"Of the thirty-eight who came to the castle: zero dead, thirty-five wounded. Four of those were critically injured, but the priests began treatment on the spot and their lives were saved. They are recovering now."
"Of the two hundred sixty-four who remained outside: nineteen dead, thirty-seven wounded. The enemy fought like a rabble, so the damage was not severe. Most of the dead fell resisting demons."
"The mages are currently establishing a safe zone centered on the castle and the underground prison, while our side is focused on disposing of demons and rescuing survivors."
The Inquisitor listened to the report in silence, interjecting with questions whenever curiosity grew heavy enough.
"The pirates did not come?"
"They remained on the beach due to the danger. Once the retaking succeeded we sent the signal, so by agreement they should have returned to the harbor for supplies."
"What do you mean, the enemy was in confusion?"
"Something went wrong—the demons began attacking Bipurit's faction. Almost no command ranks were visible; they were simply in a panic. I believe the Archmage split our forces because he judged that level of disorder would be easy to subdue."
"Ah—that would be because every demon contractor in the castle was dead, so the demons ran wild."
"Yes. After the situation ended, our investigation led us to the same conclusion."
"And Bipurit?"
"His death has been confirmed. The corpse is currently displayed on a pike."
But the question she had saved for last was, of course, this one.
"…And the Demon Knight?"
That among the thirty-eight who had faced him there were wounded but no dead pointed to one possibility. Still, that did not mean it was necessarily true.
Only after putting it off and putting it off again did she finally ask. It was not something a Hero ought to say, but she seemed a little afraid of what the priest might tell her.
"He is…"
And the priest's expression clouded.
"…The Bishop argued for execution, but after the Archmage opposed him, the decision was temporary sealing."
The Inquisitor's eyes went wide.
"Getting old is hard work…"
The Archmage rubbed the back of his neck for a moment under a list of tasks that would never end no matter how long he recited them.
He had forced three hundred people here, and even that was not enough; the thought of it made his breath catch short. This was not a problem that even a Sage's knowledge could solve.
"At least no one was caught in the disaster—that much is fortune…"
The old Shagi briefly replayed the moment when the Great Demon possessing the Demon Knight had blown the castle apart.
Even looking back, bringing only forty people inside and not bringing the rest all the way to the castle itself had been an extraordinarily lucky choice.
If he had dragged them to the castle gate, they would have died with it when the castle flew.
"…Though perhaps not no one at all."
Of course luck would only stretch so far. There was no way to check because they had vanished without a trace, but he did not believe the place had truly been empty.
Chance had already been more than generous in the survival of those he led, of the Inquisitor, and of the rogue.
"Whether the attack went wide… or was made to go wide."
The Archmage looked back at the castle. The upper portion had been scooped clean away, as if a trowel had left only a little of the base—exactly the mark of the Inquisitor stopping the blow, and the scar of a sword stroke that had aimed a little higher than the people below.
That was also why he kept turning over the difference between a strike that missed and a strike made to miss. The height of the remaining wall was almost exactly the height of a person lying flat.
It was why, instead of raising the possibility that Order personnel might have been caught in it, he had stated flatly that there were no victims.
If the Demon Knight woke whole, and if—as his shown potential suggested—he could only control the demon…
Then he could save more lives than he had taken this time.
"…If any died, I am sorry for them."
The moment you brought relative value in as a measure, goodness became a hollow word—or so they said. But wisdom did not always sit only inside goodness.
As a Sage, he had tied off the best he could manage. It might not be righteous, but it was a decision without regret.
"Hm."
…No regret—yet a little fear remained.
He worked his fingers free of the stiffness that came just from recalling it. A demon was a demon. That a single blow could cow a person this thoroughly…
"Archmage!!"
A ringing voice called for him. At the sound, the thought arrived that what had to come had finally come.
Not so much liking or disliking it as recognizing that work which was always going to arrive had now arrived.
"Keep working."
"Yes."
He said as much to a mage and glanced at what they were doing. In the middle of a clearing made by shoving buildings aside, the Demon Knight was bound.
What the mages were doing under his supervision was reinforcing the binding magic circle still further.
"They said you were sealing the Demon Knight…"
In that interval, the one who approached with the sound of metal soon had her pupils dilating. Her gaze was fixed on the sealed man.
The Inquisitor was inflexible, but she was quite sharp, and she knew how a sealing worked.
So she would not be startled by the seal itself. Which meant what had startled her was…
"Th-that sword—what is it?"
It would be the blade still driven through the Demon Knight's abdomen.
"He drove it in himself."
"Himself…?"
The Archmage roughly guessed where the Inquisitor's memory had cut off.
If she remembered the Demon Knight leaving the rogue alive and harming himself in his place, she would not be asking like this.
"Yes. Himself."
"That…"
Hearing that the Demon Knight had injured himself, the Inquisitor's eyes trembled.
But she was not someone who could fail to guess the intent of self-harm either, and in the end she steadied the shake in her gaze.
"But if you leave him like that, he will die of blood loss."
"Surely you don't think we would simply abandon him. Do not worry. We are treating him."
No—whether treatment was even needed was doubtful. Because of the sword he could not fully heal, but his recovery was not something that required much care.
He lacked the regenerative power the Inquisitor displayed, yet his natural healing clearly surpassed an ordinary person's.
"Even so, that is too much. He—he should not be treated this way."
Well. Was that truly so?
The Archmage followed the Inquisitor's gaze back to the sealed man.
Beyond the binding of his limbs, even his eyes and mouth were tightly bound with consecrated cloth—and still, to the Archmage's eye, it was not enough.
That had nothing at all to do with whether he trusted the Demon Knight.
The Demon Knight's power clearly surpassed the human average, and was just as dangerous.
Even if the chance of the demon waking in the Demon Knight's place were limited to 0.01 percent, the moment that chance broke through, the damage they would have to bear would be overwhelming.
On top of that, he was the overall commander of this field. He was responsible for too many lives to think only of one man's condition.
"Even if you speak, Inquisitor, this alone I cannot yield. You know his power better than anyone."
"I am not trying to stop the restraint. I am only asking whether at least the sword in his abdomen cannot be removed."
But the Inquisitor did not easily back down. That she was an inflexible person only made her more difficult.
How did you persuade someone who, because of the rampage, agreed to the seal, yet wanted the sword removed because she held that this was not right? And it was true she was not simply being willful.
"I did not know he had driven a sword into himself as well… but I heard that at the last moment, at least, the Demon Knight deliberately turned the attack aside. And that outside of demon worshipers and pirates, not a single person died. I do not believe that was chance."
"I do not believe it was chance either. However…"
"I am not asking you to weaken the binding rite or release him. I am only asking for the barest minimum of humane treatment. Is even that impossible?"
"…We are still short of hands. Once the situation is a little more stable, may we perform the treatment then?"
"…If it is that much."
In the end the Archmage decided to yield a step. In truth, he found this treatment unsettling as well.
You could not scold someone for the sacrifice of the few for the many by saying "you must not," and yet you also could not call it right.
"Instead, there is something I would ask of you, Inquisitor."
Above all, there was work for which he needed the Inquisitor's cooperation.
She was not the sort who would refuse a request just because this had been denied, but human relations ran smoother when things went both ways.
"What is it?"
"Nothing much. We simply need your strength to hunt the demons in the city."
Or was it only that? He had not said so, but there were quite a few places that needed the Inquisitor's power.
Purifying the corpses and the defiled ground scattered through the city, bringing out people who might still be trapped, clearing demons outside the city to open the roads—all of it went far more smoothly if the Inquisitor stepped in.
Of course the Archmage could resolve some of it himself… but unfortunately, he had even more work of his own.
Comforting survivors and preparing their food and shelter, requesting supplies from the rear, rooting out demon worshipers who might have slipped among the people, deciding the treatment of those who surrendered when defeat became clear, disposing of the corpses of dead demon worshipers, and so on.
So he had no choice but to entrust the rest to the Inquisitor, who had already strained herself taking this city. They were simply too short of hands.
"That is not something you need to request. It is work I ought to do."
"I know you will say that. Still… you have not even properly rested. Barely eight hours have passed since you collapsed."
"I am fine. I am not the only one who has gone without rest. In such a situation I cannot turn my back on my duty."
"Is that so."
"Yes. The Demon Knight would have done the same."
The Archmage looked at the one who still shone even after her hair had been cut short once again.
He was relieved she was not trying to strike the Demon Knight down over this incident—and at the same time, her excessive reverence for him was beginning to worry him.
If the Demon Knight never woke, he did not know where that admiration might fly.
"You must not overdo it."
"Do not worry. I have no intention of pushing myself too far. I know that advancing step by step will save more people than my collapsing would."
"…Very right words."
But even if it came to that, the Inquisitor would not lose her way. Or rather—from the start, he could not even imagine the Demon Knight failing to wake.
Inevitably, he too believed in that man.
"…Come to think of it, where has the rogue gone?"
Then, just as she was about to leave, the Inquisitor turned back. It was a question she would naturally ask.
Only that the answer was awkward.
"Ah, he is… doing a task I entrusted to him."
"Is that so? Then do you know where he is as well?"
"…I do not know well. Why are you looking for him?"
The mission the Archmage had given the rogue was not, strictly speaking, work the Inquisitor would like.
If he explained the circumstances she would understand, but the distance between the two of them would widen. They had only just begun to grow close; there was no need to pour cold water on it.
He pretended not to know.
"That is…"
This time it was the Inquisitor who looked short of an answer. The Archmage guessed at why.
"I—I have to thank him."
The answer came quickly. An irrepressibly fond smile rose to the Archmage's face.
"I see. However, the task I asked of him is extremely discreet, so I recommend you not search for him now, Inquisitor. He has not left the city, so later… once he has finished what he must do, how about delivering it then?"
"I see. Understood."
Separately, he still could not arrange a meeting.
"Then I will be going."
"Please do."
He waved her off with a flutter of his hand. And once the Inquisitor had gone some distance, he turned his head back to his own work.
"Archmage! There is a problem with the safe-zone barrier!"
"This is more urgent! We have discovered objects and documents developed by the demon worshipers! Research on variant zombies and curse jars, it seems!"
…Well. It was not as if he had foreseen the extra work piling on.
Probably.
While the Archmage was buried in his own work, the Deathbringer hid himself in an alley—for the sake of the mission the Archmage had entrusted to him.
I'm sorry.
Not that he was giving the mission his full and exclusive focus.
Leaning against the wall, he turned the memory over. Over the image of the man now tightly bound and still having seals piled on him, he kept seeing lashes that had caught the dawn light and the gray eyes that had faintly shone beneath them.
I'm truly sorry.
Could an apology that dissonant even exist in this world? As mismatched as the phrase "a glorious death"—and yet somehow not awkward either. Was such a change possible?
Whenever he recalled that moment, the Deathbringer's feelings grew complicated.
The Demon Knight then had clearly not been a demon… and yet he had not quite seemed the man he knew either. The Demon Knight he knew would have left only a single upright line instead of such a soft apology.
And yet, even so, that subtle sense of wrongness did not arrive as a full sense of wrongness—why was that?
Perhaps because that smiling face had looked so harmless.
I will never hurt you. I'm sorry I wounded you. A smile that had carried those sentences whole through expression alone—and so…
And even so.
He had been able to do nothing. For the single reason that he had no power to make others follow him, no honor, no authority.
"Hah…"
Unable even to lay the fallen man flat, too awkwardly positioned to treat him.
He had not managed a single word to the bishop who raved that the man must be killed—thanks to that side deliberately ignoring him—and once the Archmage had finally persuaded them into a seal, he had even less right to speak.
Even his plea to at least pull out the sword had been heard by no one.
Powerless.
Just as he had been unable to resist even once in the moment the Demon Knight had tried to kill him.
"Damn it."
Thud.
The Deathbringer set his head against the wall under the surge of rage that rose whenever he thought of it.
A thin self-loathing settled into a corner of his mind and waved a hand. It was a feeling he had never known before joining this journey.
Of course—before walking with these people, he had been, if anything, on the side of the "predators."
He had lacked honor and power, but when night and silence kept him company he could exist as the executioner of every kind of trash. That much was certain.
But now? Information gathering and uncovering the truth were among his talents, yet he could not exist as an executioner.
When he decided to travel with them he had thought he could manage if he tried… a complete delusion.
The world they lived in and the world he lived in were entirely different.
Not that he could kill them because they were human—rather, it was as if only those who were human were ones he could kill.
"Goddamn it, why did it turn out like this?"
Then, for a moment, a sound from outside the alley where he was hiding shattered his thoughts.
The lethargy that had been climbing to soak his brain was crushed in an instant, and cold reason focused on his five senses. He concentrated on the duty he had been given.
"Quiet, if you don't want to die."
"Damn it. Never thought the demon worshipers would go down…"
Melting into the shadow, he listened to their conversation.
The complaints of those clearing the corpses that lined the castle and shifting the rubble of collapsed buildings ran long indeed.
"Didn't even get to enjoy ourselves properly!"
"You're lucky you still have your lives."
"Yeah, but…"
As for who they were: pirates who had followed the demon worshipers and then, the moment those worshipers lost, surrendered as if by magic.
Men who sold out their homeland and, when it looked like they would lose, raised the white flag—traitors to their country, and turncoats on top of it. A two-piece set.
"Just move the stuff. If we don't work, those people might kill us."
If you asked why such non-recyclable trash was still alive even after the main force arrived—well.
He would answer that there were simply too many surviving pirates to go around executing them. Killing them all would have required the main force to accept considerable losses of its own.
"You really think they'd kill us? How many of us are there?"
So the Archmage, to buy time until additional support arrived, had—as he himself once had—bargained a temporary truce with a false lure: a pardon… and since they were keeping them alive anyway, decided to use them as labor.
"We're even doing the work they tell us to! They can't kill us when we're like this!"
The result was the idiots walking past right now, among others.
Idiots who never thought of the sins they had committed, only of: We surrendered, and we're even doing a bit of the labor you ordered, so we get to live!
"If it comes to it, we take civilians hostage and run. Easy."
There was even one who thought like that.
Ridiculous creatures. Preparing an escape route in advance was wise enough—but what face did they have, planning an escape route? They ought to die quietly and still fall short.
The Archmage had been right to foresee this and ask for observation and surveillance.
Truly vicious people were often the ones who, even about what they themselves had done wrong, sincerely believed the problem lay with someone else.
"We're banned from going near where the civilians are."
"It's fine. A few guys I know are already hidden there. We just have them grab hostages."
"Damn, those bastards are quick. When did they hide?"
"Dunno. Probably slipped in while those pale ones were going around rescuing people."
"Shit, I should've done that."
Why—exactly as they themselves had just confessed—like pretending to be the ordinary people they had slaughtered, just to survive.
"Unfortunately…"
But in this kind of work, he and the rogues who had come with him were a step above.
"You've all been found out."
Most of the pirates who had already slipped among the civilians had been rooted out.
What they were hunting now were the discontented seeds who, in a worst case, could whip up a riot and lead it. The situation was already precarious enough; there was no need to leave alive people who could put a match to a time bomb.
Which made those two cleanup targets as well.
The Deathbringer packed the information away tightly and brought a hand to his waist. Only half a beat later did he realize that his kukri had been shattered in the Demon Knight's hand.
"Hm."
A shame, but it did not matter. It had not been a weapon he particularly cherished… and he could kill people without a weapon.
Nearly half of his not-especially-long life had been spent in just that kind of work.
"The wall of a man would faint if he knew…"
At that point the Deathbringer understood one thing.
It was true he was of no help in battles between superhumans… but this kind of weeding-out was something neither the Demon Knight, nor the Hero, nor the Archmage could do. Only he could.
"But so what."
And because only he could, he could not drop out of this party. He did not want to hear the nagging, so he would keep it secret from the Hero—but still.
In a mood a good deal better than before, the Deathbringer pricked up his ears.
One goal only. To clear all of them out in advance, so that when the Demon Knight woke there would be no extra work for him.
"Ah. Been a while since I cleaned up trash."
It was the moment the name bestowed by the Information Guild on only a very few—Deathbringer, the one who delivered death—descended upon the city.
The hour of judgment for the wicked had come.
"……?"
"What is it?"
"Mm… I thought I heard a scream just now."
But this rear stretch was a section where the mages had raised a barrier to block demons from entering.
Improvised as it was, a few demons banding together would punch through it—but in exchange, if the barrier broke, the mages would notice.
If a demon had truly broken the barrier and killed someone, it could never have been this quiet.
"I did not hear it…"
"Yes. It must have been my imagination."
So she had simply misheard. It had not been a shriek of "kyaa" in the first place—only something like a "gkh," the sound of air going out of a body.
"Is there anywhere that feels wrong—"
"There is not."
It was true that since arriving in this land she had run this far without proper rest, but that was a story that applied to everyone. Even if she had suffered especially at the front, she had no wish to fall back.
"More importantly, prepare yourselves. I see a demon."
Instead she raised her weapon to deal with the demons and worshipers left in the city center. A gargoyle was visible, hiding in the city's shadow.
"Please do not overexert yourself."
"This much is fine."
Her condition could not be called perfect, but she was not unable to control her body, nor unable to draw up Holy Power. Only the maximum she could use had temporarily decreased.
"I will go alone."
Even so, dealing with remaining stragglers did not require her usual full maximum.
The Inquisitor adjusted her prayer so as not to overload herself. Holy power—less than an eighth of what she had used against the Demon Knight—soaked into her body.
A slight heat layered itself over the muscle pain that had not yet healed.
"Are you truly all right? You only just woke…"
"I am truly fine."
It was true that Holy Power caused the user pain, but as long as it was not used to excess it usually stopped at the level of an oncoming cold.
To someone who endured pain enough to cloud the mind, this much was not even worth calling endurance. And when she thought of the Demon Knight, still wrapped in layer upon layer of seals and fighting a demon, she could not afford to be delicate at all.
The Inquisitor firmly cut off their worry and advanced alone.
Skree!
But she had no gift for stealthy approach. The gargoyle woke.
At that point she briefly thought of the rogue. He had even gotten behind a Great Demon; he would have moved without this thing noticing him either.
A flicker of envy rose, then scattered just as quickly.
She might lack the talent for silent steps, but this way was more comfortable for her. And there was something she wanted to test.
"Hup!"
Looking at the thing that had come down to the ground and bared its fangs at her, the Inquisitor swung her mace. Boom. The earth ahead, struck by the mace, heaved.
Skreee!
The gargoyle tried to launch itself in a hurry, but taking flight from ground that had just collapsed was impossible. Holy Power that had stretched from the mace and run through the earth swept over the gargoyle's position.
"Incredible…!"
"To think such a thing is possible…"
The priests and inquisitors behind her were stricken with awe. It was not hard to understand.
Even in an Order with a long history, no one had used Holy Power this way. More precisely, there had never been a reason to use it like this.
"Hero, that is…"
"It is nothing special."
"A new method of use. Remarkable."
Of course—Holy Power was a force specialized in protection, blessing, and healing.
Moreover, those who held a great deal of Holy Power more often went toward the priestly path, where they could heal people and purify land, rather than toward becoming inquisitors.
Inquisitors who were hard-pressed just to bless and protect their own bodies could never have developed a technique like this. This was possible purely because she was an inquisitor who could handle Holy Power outside any ordinary measure.
And even she had only managed to conceive it after watching the Demon Knight and wondering, Could I do something like that?
"If refined… it will become a great weapon."
"I think so as well."
But not yet. It consumed far too much Holy Power and had not been formalized.
She needed to use it more, in more varied ways, and get a feel for it. Through this affair she had felt her own shortcomings all too keenly.
"If you need help, please say so at any time."
"I am grateful for your kindness."
Constantly gauging how much she could safely use, the Inquisitor advanced again.
And for good reason: beyond the motive of helping others, she had one more reason she must not fall.
"There is a demon over there as well!"
"Eliminate it. And one of you, please go to the house with the red roof over there. There should be one person inside. If you say you have returned after killing the dragon, they will understand."
"Understood."
The Bishop and most of the priests felt fear toward the Demon Knight. And if she overexerted herself and collapsed again… they might sentence him to death on the grounds that there was no one left to stop him.
Even if she had asked them not to. The position of Hero made it easy to persuade people of the Order; it did not make her their superior.
If they ignored her request, she would have no way to stop them.
That alone she had to prevent.
So the Inquisitor held down her impatience and advanced carefully, step by step. She might not have rested properly, but by regulating her pace as she went, the accumulating fatigue was still within what she could bear.
At this rate, by tomorrow morning she would be able to clear the city clean and save the people.
And if that was accomplished before the Demon Knight woke… she might be able to stand guard before his seal.
If it came to that, even the Bishop would not dare try to harm him on the grounds that there was no one to stop him.
Having secured a clear goal, her green eyes shone.
It was only after that that the demons began to vanish from the city.
The days started to pass, each one pressed tight for time.