Apostle of the Evil God (2)
Hold out?
There's someone up there I'm not even sure I can hold out against at my current level, and You're telling me to hold out!?
Does this pathetic piece of garbage have a conscience or not? I'm about to die because of You — the least You could do is give me something!
Even as I fumed, my eyes dropped below the message, and sure enough, another line was written there.
Reward: Short-term buff (granted in advance)
Oh. So You weren't just talking at me — You were handing me a quest?
And "granted in advance"? What's that supposed to be?
I'd never seen that phrase even back when I played Soul Academy, so I was puzzled — but the question answered itself before long.
A surge of elation welled up from somewhere deep in my body. It was even greater than the buff effect of my Mesugaki skill — a power I could only describe as a sense of omnipotence.
Ah-ha. So that's what this is. You useless Chief God.
You usually just treat me like a toy to play with, but the moment your toy's about to actually break, now you're panicking?
Come to think of it, you also butted in back when I nearly died to the Alchemist. I guess I really am a fun toy for you, huh?
Well, whatever. I'll gratefully accept what's given. Lord Armadi.
Though I'd think that for a Chief God, this much should just be standard procedure.
But if I complain, You'll probably slap me with some weird penalty again, won't You? Fine. I'll shut up and take it.
The Apostle of the Evil God reflected me and Joy in his crimson eyes from above.
Long black hair. A black coat hanging down to his calves. A threatening frame that strained against his stifling, restrictive clothing.
The Apostle of Tariki, the Evil God of Darkness.
Nakrad.
Haah. So the strongest bastard in the entire event shows up right from the start.
"Lady Alrn. That thing is—"
'Joy. Get behind me.'
"Airhead Lady. Stay behind me and keep trembling."
The man gave a small nod, then conjured a magic circle above his open palm.
I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to magic, but even I could tell what that spell was.
Because the magic Nakrad uses in his first raid on the Academy is fixed.
Isolation Barrier.
A spell that seals the inside and the outside off from each other completely.
It took the Academy's professors several minutes to break it, if I recalled.
Back when I participated in the first raid event at the plaza, we definitely had to hold out for three minutes, didn't we?
Three minutes.
I don't know why a span of time I'd normally curse as ridiculously short suddenly felt so impossibly long.
Taking a deep breath, I planted the divinely-forged shield in front of me and wrapped my hand around the mace.
Should've worn my armor if I'd known this was coming.
Though I doubt my armor would mean anything against that thing.
The moment my preparations were finished, Nakrad touched down lightly in front of us.
"Hm. Young, and weak. I can scarcely believe that a blessing chose you."
Nakrad looked me up and down, then spoke with an air of utter contempt.
"Killing children like you was never my pastime. But curse the god who chose you, little brat."
'You don't need to tell me — I curse them every single day!'
"I curse them every single day, Bluffing Beanpole."
"Bluffing...?"
Bluffing Beanpole. I can roughly guess where that nickname came from.
Nakrad's design does have a bit of a chuunibyou thing going on.
Burning red eyes, everything else pitch black — and on top of that, he's literally blessed by darkness.
The players called him "Chuuni Apostle" more often than they called him Nakrad, so I suppose the word "chuuni" just morphed into "bluffing."
"'Bluffing,' is it. I see. So you cannot even grasp the gulf between our strength."
With that, Nakrad formed a small black sphere above his hand and hurled it at me.
Iron Wall cried danger.
Again and again.
Relentlessly.
Until the word danger filled every corner of my skull.
Raise the barrier!
Hearing Halbae's voice within it, I spread a barrier of divinity.
And the instant that barrier finished forming, the black sphere before me burst apart into an explosion.
Hair whipped through the air. Driven by the blast's wind, debris scattered all around me.
The barrier, straining under the shock, slowly began to crack — and then it shattered.
The small mercy was that the force behind it had been blunted considerably.
I widened the divine shield and braced my legs beneath me.
To hold out.
To protect Joy behind me.
When the explosion finally died down and I lowered the shield slightly, I could see Nakrad lazily floating several more spheres around himself.
"Do you still think I'm bluffing?"
I can withstand the explosions those spheres make.
Normal me, maybe not — but with this buff from the useless Chief God, I think I can manage somehow.
But right now he's just toying with me.
The moment cracks start spreading through that barrier, he's going to get serious and try to finish me off.
Could I withstand that kind of firepower?
'What do I do?'
A dire situation, to be sure...
But make use of the fact that he is certain of his victory.
'Even if I land one hit, he'll just beat me to death like a dog anyway.'
That is not what I mean. Use thy taunts to make him so wrought up that he cannot spare a thought for the barrier breaking.
Halbae's strategy went like this:
As the Apostle of an Evil God, Nakrad would want nothing more than to crush Armadi's Apostle — me — in the most humiliating way possible.
So we'd bait him into playing with me.
Use the Mesugaki skill to infuriate him as much as possible, so that he stops paying attention to the barrier cracking apart.
Make him decide that he'll keep toying with me until salvation arrives.
Not bad, old man. Not bad at all.
I exhaled slowly inside.
A confident smirk playing at the corners of my mouth.
Eyes narrowed into mocking crescents.
Shoulders thrown back as if I didn't feel a single shred of tension.
"Hnngh♡ What's the matter, Bluffing Beanpole — desperate for a little girl like me to acknowledge you?♡ Is that why you dress like that? Because you're a garbage adult with zero self-esteem?♡"
Nakrad's eyebrows drew into a flat line.
He's a character with almost no emotional expression.
But at this point, he'd have to be thoroughly irritated.
Still, this wasn't enough.
"What nonsense are you spouting?"
"What, what?♡ You actually think that getup of yours looks fine, Bluffing Beanpole?♡ Really?♡ God, what trash taste from a trash adult♡"
Perhaps he decided answering me was pointless.
Nakrad flung one of the spheres.
I'd already seen it coming.
Because I'd kept my barrier primed and ready, the one I threw up now was twice as thick and sturdy as the last —
strong enough to withstand Nakrad's explosion.
When the smoke cleared and his face came into view, I laughed with everything I had.
"Throwing a tantrum over a little teasing?♡ Since when do adults have such pathetic patience?♡ Aww, does the Bluffing Beanpole just have a baby's insides under all that wrinkly skin?♡"
"Silence."
"I mean~ that must be why a bottom-of-the-barrel adult like you worships a bottom-of-the-barrel evil god, huh?♡"
The instant the words "evil god" left my mouth, a rich surge of elation boiled up inside me.
And at the same time, I could see Nakrad's flat brows slash into a diagonal scowl, the skin between them creasing.
Good. Let's push a little further.
"He is a bottom-of-the-barrel evil god, isn't he?♡ Why else would he pick a puny, worthless Bluffing Beanpole like you for an apostle?♡ Some gutter-trash god for gutter-trash servants♡—"
Before I could even finish, Nakrad hurled every black sphere floating around him all at once.
He took the bait.
Apostles are usually zealots to the core, after all. They can't stand hearing their god insulted.
Reinforcing my barrier with divinity to survive the blast, I called out to Joy.
'Joy!'
"Airhead Lady!"
"...Yes? YES!"
'RUN! I'll buy you time!'
"Run! That Bluffing Beanpole is more than enough for me alone."
"But—"
Joy's eyes were wavering.
The fear that had flooded her mind was warring with her conscience.
This is why good people are hopeless.
If this were Vishy, she'd have been gone before I even opened my mouth.
"Would you kindly disappear?♡ A useless deadweight like you is nothing but an obstacle♡"
With that said, I turned my focus back to the barrier.
The buff from the useless Chief God is actually pretty decent.
Now that I'm getting used to the added strength, I can really feel it.
The problem is that even this isn't enough to close the gap between me and Nakrad.
Hey, useless Chief God. If You're going to help, then help properly.
What am I supposed to do with help this half-assed?
The explosions ceased, and just as the smoke began to thin, I heard footsteps behind me.
Thank you, Joy.
Thank you for listening to me.
I was so worried you'd turn out to be the kind of heroine who screams "Lady Alrn!" from behind me and screws everything up.
"Truly insolent."
As the smoke cleared completely, a razor-sharp voice slid out of Nakrad's mouth.
"Just as I'd expect of an apostle of that garbage Armadi."
"Better than an apostle of a creepy bottom-tier god like Tariki, no?♡ At least I'm not a self-esteem-deficient broken adult?♡"
"You damned brat."
"Ahaha♡ Are you mad?♡ You're mad!♡ Getting genuinely angry over a little kid's teasing?♡ Certified adult failure♡"
The moment I finished speaking, I heard Iron Wall screaming danger.
I barely got my shield up before Nakrad's fist slammed into it.
An overwhelming force that this body simply could not endure.
I gritted my teeth and bore it — but even that had its limits.
My body went flying into the air.
I rolled across the ground over and over, and the instant I came to my senses and scrambled upright, Iron Wall blared its warning again.
From every direction.
I had no way of knowing which side to block.
Whichever side I chose, blocking everything was impossible.
I frantically moved the shield the best way Iron Wall showed me — but the best was not the same as perfect.
Spikes of darkness erupted from the shadows on the ground and speared toward me.
A few of them were stopped by my shield, but far more were not.
"Khhugh! Kgh!"
It hurt.
My body had been pierced in so many places that I couldn't even tell where the pain was coming from anymore.
Everything, everywhere, simply hurt.
"Do you understand your place now?"
Even as the word pain filled my skull to bursting, I heard the voice and lifted my head.
There stood Nakrad, forcing himself to look expressionless.
Ha. What a piece of shit.
"Hm. Still not broken, are you?"
With those words, Nakrad snapped his fingers — and something punched straight through my abdomen.
It was hot.
The blood spilling from my stomach was the temperature of molten lava, as if it would sear my flesh away and leave nothing but black ash.
The agony was so overwhelming that I wanted to simply let go of consciousness — but my skill wouldn't release me.
It dragged my mind, kicking and screaming, back up into the world.
Amid my begging for it to just let me go, something other than the skill seized me by the hair and hauled my head upright.
"Answer me again."
I could see Nakrad's face.
I could see my own death.
My death was reflected in his crimson eyes.
Fear.
Fear came flooding up.
That emotion I had forgotten for so long poured down like a torrential storm, straining to burst the dam.
I wanted to ignore him, but the color of that fear was too deep — I wanted to erase it, and I couldn't.
"Answer."
Answer? Answer to what?
What am I supposed to say?
What does he want me to say?
Unable to read him, I smiled like an idiot.
"Heh."
Along with that contemptuous little laugh, a black sphere dropped in front of my eyes.
Ah. Fuck.
...
My ears rang with tinnitus.
That shrill eeeEEEEEE went on and on.
At the same time, I could tell Halbae was shouting something — but I couldn't make it out.
Am I going to die? Maybe I am.
How? Who knows.
It definitely won't be a peaceful death.
My teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Alongside the pain, a frigid sensation crawled up my spine.
Fear Overcome struggled to push it down, but the dam had already burst.
All I could think was: I'm a bullfrog cornered by the snake — I'm completely fucked.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die.
Every bone in my body broken.
Played with like a toy.
In the most humiliating way he can possibly manage.
Wouldn't it be better to just bite through my tongue?
Killing myself would honestly be easier.
Yeah. If the alternative is becoming that bastard's plaything, then—
"I know you are not yet dead. Did you think you would be let off gently, after defiling Lord Tariki's name?"
I heard his voice drawing closer.
Bite my tongue. Quickly.
Die.
Just die.
"You cannot move anyway, so stay where you are and wait. I shall bring that woman from before."
A woman?
The one who was with me?
Joy.
He means Joy.
"I shall teach you what sins you have committed."
...No. Not that.
My favorite character, dying because of my mistake.
That — that can't—
Right into the space where resignation had been settling, a different thought forced its way in.
Between the words terrifying and painful, the word no carved itself into my mind.
That word swelled larger and larger, and within moments it shoved the rising fear aside, if only for an instant.
And in that instant, rational thought cut through.
'Mercy of Armadi.'
Mercy of Armadi
Warmth floods the wounds; flesh knits, pain recedes — the Goddess's compassion made manifest.
My body healed — and at the same moment, the dam holding back the fear rose again.
Haah. Fuck.
That godawful Mesugaki skill penalty.
The second I take one real beating, I get swallowed whole by fear. Every time.
Is Unbreakable Will and Fear Overcome alone not enough?
"Useless Beanpole♡"
Staggering to my feet, I called that name again.
And the man who had been about to leave turned his head.
"What?♡ Running away because you're scared?♡ Boohoo♡ Paa~thetic♡"
I can still hold out.
I'm a tank, after all.