The Stolen Body
Clang!
After trading blows with the demon again and again, Ryeonhwa was certain of her victory.
An Intermediate Demon with powers would have been too much for her to handle alone, failed Knight or not—but anything below that rank, she could manage on her own without difficulty.
True, the demon had escaped, but it had lost an arm in the process, and it carried no small number of wounds from the fighting since.
She bore cuts and bruises of her own, but nothing beyond what she had anticipated.
Judging purely by the damage done, the demon had fared far worse than she had.
In the end, a demon was nothing more than a being of flesh and bone and blood—a creature bound to a physical body, no matter what it called itself.
Shring.
Ryeonhwa raised Gurka once more and began preparing to finish things.
Etched into her favored blade was a device that suppressed a demon's regenerative power and carved wounds far deeper than they should have been.
Guns were more efficient for hunting demons, admittedly—but she stubbornly kept the sword as her primary weapon, because she needed to feel, with her own two hands, that she was the one killing them.
Demons—those things lower than insects—had to die in agony. All of them.
That was how intense her hatred burned.
The reason was simple.
Long ago, a single demon had slaughtered her family and her friends, and she had vowed to devote her entire life to killing demons.
It was a story any human connected to demons might tell—but the emotion it had left her with was anything but ordinary.
It was the fuel that carried her through the hellish Knight training where thousands applied and only dozens survived, and it was the strength that let her endure the wounds demons gave her even now.
I have to kill more demons.
More of them… more painfully.
And for that, she needed to be chosen by the Holy Grail.
To be chosen, to find the demon that had murdered her family, and to kill it—that was her final goal, the very purpose of her life.
"The Holy Grail? …Ah, ah… so you want to be chosen by the Grail. Is that why you came after me?"
"…What?"
The demon, holding its distance, threw the words out like an ambush, and Ryeonhwa's charge stuttered.
Clang!
Just for an instant—but the demon noticed the stolen timing and lunged. She barely deflected its swinging fist with a sweep of her blade.
That had been close.
Had that blow landed clean, she would certainly have been knocked out of the fight.
The demon before her had no supernatural ability, but it was among the strongest of the Lower ranks, and its body was enhanced to a considerable degree.
Proof of that: it had taken her coated, steel-cutting blade with its bare body and come away with mere wounds rather than severed limbs.
Even the arm she'd severed in her ambush would never have come off had she not caught it off guard.
"Every so often we get ones like you—a Knight… no, an Apprentice Knight. Scraped your way up to apprentice, only to never be chosen by the Grail, never become a true Knight. Isn't that your story too?"
The demon wore a smile full of composure.
It was being driven back, and yet there wasn't a trace of urgency in its voice—it was hard to believe.
…What is this? Does it know me?
Impossible…
And even if it did, all she had to do was refuse to latch onto an opponent's words meant to shake her mind.
Ryeonhwa forced down the flicker of agitation and focused on the reality unfolding before her eyes.
Whoosh!
Kaaang―!
The exchange began anew.
"You think killing me will get you chosen by the Grail? Slaying more and more demons—do you really think the Grail will acknowledge you for it? Then why did all those other Apprentice Knights never become Knights?"
Why does this demon…!
With every beat of attack and defense, the demon bored relentlessly into the very anxieties and doubts she had carried inside.
It felt as though her mind were being read aloud.
A sickening sensation, like something gnawing at her from within.
And yet… something was wrong.
The harder she tried to ignore the demon's words, the deeper they burrowed into her focus, stirring her agitation all the more.
The agitation chipped away at her concentration, and in the end—
Thud!
"Kgh!"
A flying kick slipped through the instant of her opening. She bounced once off the ground and rolled across the floor.
CRASH―!
She sprang back up reflexively and barely evaded the heel that came stomping down after her—but the turmoil in her chest would not fade.
Despite being a mere Apprentice Knight, she had killed plenty of Lower Demons.
Plenty of those demons had tried to shake her mind with their words.
Threats, pleading, begging, flimsy tricks—never once had any of it worked on her.
Her hatred of demons, her burning resolve for vengeance against the one that had murdered her family, had never allowed such shallow gambits.
"Without the Grail's blessing, I suppose you'll never take proper revenge on demons, will you."
It's reading my thoughts—
Thud!
Once again she found herself listening to the demon's voice, and she took another hit.
"Ugh…!"
Collapsed on the ground, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, she pushed herself up into a half-crouch.
Her skull was ringing.
Her vision had doubled.
Not yet combat-incapacitated, but there was no denying she was in a dangerous state.
"You think I'm reading your thoughts? Close, but not quite. I'm a Lower Demon. But a Lower Demon on the verge of Intermediate can exercise something close to a true power."
The demon, its smile never fading, looked at her.
"I'd love to plumb the depths of your emotions, but I have to heed the words of the One who appeared to me in a dream, so let's stop here. I have some business with the man you brought along."
The One who appeared in a dream?
A man? …Don't tell me—Dohyun?
Come to think of it, why would the demon…
"Do—"
She staggered—and crashed down!
She reached out to stop the demon from leaving, but her body swayed and folded to the floor.
"Damn it!"
Catching up to the demon came before wondering why it was after Dohyun. She had to stop it first.
Otherwise, because of her, one innocent civilian would—
Civilian?
Ryeonhwa belatedly remembered Seohyun and whipped her head toward where the girl had fallen.
…She's gone.
Don't tell me… Dohyun took her and ran?
Ah… ah―!!
Only then did she realize, because of one selfish wish—to be chosen by the Holy Grail—how enormous a catastrophe she had set in motion.
Her priorities had been twisted beyond repair.
She, who had lost her family to a demon, might have gone on to create an entirely new set of victims.
The moment she understood how grave her hubris had been, fear and guilt came crashing over her.
And at the same time, she felt gratitude toward Dohyun—for carrying Seohyun, the person she should have protected first, out of harm's way.
His kindness, his instinct to save a person before anything else—unlike her—made her think that perhaps he really was just a human with no connection to demons at all.
"Ungh…!!"
She tried with everything she had to force her fallen body upright and bar the demon's path, but it was no use.
Like a newborn fawn, her legs shook as she hauled them under her—only for her strength to fail instantly and drop her back to the ground.
"Having a rough time, I see?"
…Huh?
Startled by the woman's voice that came from nowhere, she lifted her head—and there, crouching inches from her face, an utterly unexpected figure was looking down at her.
Fzzt…
The blurred, human-shaped presence crackled with static, then resolved into the form of a woman she had seen exactly once before.
Yoon Jia.
Dohyun's little sister. Why would she…
"…A demon."
To the question, and to the only answer that made sense, Yoon Jia—the demon—replied with a smile.
"I'll be borrowing your body for a bit. Don't worry, I'll use it and give it right back. I'm not allowed to touch you yet. Ah—but if he says he doesn't want you, I'll dispose of you later."
"Heheh. Like I'd—EGBEHGEHEK―!!"
The grinning demon's body melted in an instant, collapsing into a mass of viscous black fluid that burrowed into Ryeonhwa's flesh.
"KEHEHEHEHK♥"
As the liquid forced its way into every opening her body possessed—her ears, her nose, her eyes, between her legs—Ryeonhwa shrieked, a scream that was grotesque and obscene all at once.
Tears streamed from her rolled-back eyes; drool ran in a thin line from her lolling tongue.
Pssshh!
From between the legs of her trembling, bridge-arched lower body, a torrent burst free, soaking through her leggings.
Every cell in her body, her skin, the fine hairs on her arms—even her nipples stiffened taut and red, and one by one, Ryeonhwa began surrendering control of her flesh to the invader inside her.
The body she had trained so devotedly.
The flesh that held the living record of a human named Ryeonhwa.
The body meant to carry out her revenge against the demons was being torn from her by the very thing she despised most in this world.
Merely imagining what form that stolen body would be made to take sent fear flooding over her like a rising tide.
Her self, her soul, was being stained by something repulsive and bone-deep horrifying—and that sensation came to dominate the entire chamber.
No!!
I won't, I won't, I WON'T――!!!
Get out of my bodyyyy―!!
Ahh, ahhh――
As she lost herself piece by piece, the screams she wailed and wailed again grew quieter, and quieter still.
"…Hehk, heh heh… heh… hmmm."
The body that had thrashed as if in seizure slowly regained its stillness, and the eyes that had rolled back found their place once more.
Tap…
The flesh that had been unable even to rise now stood up from the floor without effort, as if none of it had ever happened.
Heehee.
Ryeonhwa flexed her hand open and shut, open and shut, and then let a sickening smile spread across her face.
"Dohyun, honey♥"
The cloying, coquettish voice that left Ryeonhwa's mouth was a tone she had never once used in her entire life.
"A demon stole my body away, teehee♥ Stolen by the very demons I've hated all my life, and now look at me…"
Sshlick…
She peeled her soaked leggings down without a hint of shame and, knees bent, spread herself open with her fingers, presenting it invitingly.
"Spreading my pussy and begging you to stuff me~? Look at this body, trained to become a Knight—pretty great figure, right? Built day after day to fight demons. Doesn't it seem just perfect for you to use? This part's never even been touched, you know? Truth is, I trained it this hard just hoping you'd ravish me~ So hurry up and rape this pathetic Apprentice Knight Ryeonhwa's body, the one the demon stole♥"
Rocking her hips in a practiced, seductive sway, she looked for all the world like a cheap street whore.
"As long as I have you, I don't need revenge for my family. I don't need revenge on demons at all. I'm yours, Dohyun—your slave, your personal cum-dumpster, heehee♥ I don't need to be a Knight. Serving as a receptacle for your seed—that's my purpose now. That's the meaning of my existence♥"
Giggling in the empty chamber, flaunting herself toward someone unseen, Ryeonhwa suddenly—like a lie—snapped back to a neutral expression.
For an instant she seemed to have returned to her old self, but the honeyed fluid dripping down between her thighs made it clear that nothing had been restored at all.
"…Hmm, if I seduce him like this, would it get him excited? Would he put himself inside this body's pussy?"
The demon wearing Ryeonhwa tilted its head, pondering whether the display would arouse the one it loved—and then, gazing at somewhere no one else could see, it broke into a blissful smile.
"I really should just ask him. How he wants to use this woman. His wishes always come first, after all."
Ssshh…
Ryeonhwa's body bled into the shadow, its outline dissolving—and then, impossibly, the spot where she had stood was empty.
Only the tears and the slick fluid left pooled on the floor remained, the sole evidence that a human being named Ryeonhwa had ever existed there at all.