The Demon of Mockery, Berbaria (1)

Pain flared across her shoulder like it had caught fire. Without even thinking, Yona cradled the wooden plank with Rubina tied to it and crumpled backward to the ground.

"Ah—ugh, ughhh…!"

No matter how hard she clenched her teeth—hard enough that the grinding threatened to crack them—the pain didn't subside one bit. If anything, it hurt worse and worse, until her mind went white and all she wanted was to throw down everything in her hands and claw at the wound itself.

Even so, she didn't let go of the plank. Quite the opposite—she hugged the board holding Rubina tighter still.

"You son of a bitch—!"

With a thud, Andrei went tumbling across the floor. Beaten past the point of having a single unbroken feature on his face, he crawled along the ground, groveling.

"I—I held out…! M-mercy, have mer—"

"Shut up!"

Alec had seized the back of Andrei's neck while the man was still groping blindly at the floor, and his eyes had long since gone beyond the reach of reason.

"Alec, Alec!"

Even at Yona's shout, Alec didn't turn around. The moment he'd seen Andrei strike her, something in him had simply snapped.

"Alec…! If you kill him, you—you can't… agh!"

Alec had finally drawn the hammer from his belt.

If he brought that down on Andrei's head, Alec would become a murderer. There was a world of difference between an adventurer and a murderer. No matter how vile the man, judgment belonged to the judge—not to an ordinary sinner.

"ALEC—!"

Yona screamed his name until her throat tore.

And that was the moment.

- Dukudung.

A deep boom, like the sound of a heartbeat, rolled through the air. At that sound, everyone froze—Yona, and even Alec.

- Dukung.

- Dukung.

- Dukudung.

The vibration pulsed and swelled, growing fiercer with every beat, like a great heart throbbing. And its source was the altar. The very altar where Rubina had been bound until a moment ago—where Yona had caught her in her arms. The altar that had drunk its fill of the blood that spilled from Yona's shoulder, running down through her tattoo.

From that altar, the sound of a beating heart was echoing.

"E-Eu-ai-ia-ni—!!!"

Jubilation. Agitation. Rapture. Andrei howled with a voice that sounded like all of them mashed together. Even with his skull about to crack in Alec's grip, he screamed someone's name in a voice brimming with pure joy.

"Wh-what in the world is happening?"

Kayak and James, locked in battle in the hall—and even the guard troopers who'd belatedly joined in and were subduing the cultists—all stopped at once and turned toward the altar.

"What… is going on…?"

Grimacing against the still-raging pain, Yona at least managed to tuck the wooden plank behind her body. She wanted to untie Rubina, but her right arm no longer answered her will, and there was nothing she could do.

The heartbeat pounding from the altar didn't stop. Just when the sound seemed to have swelled from a dull dukung-dukung into a thundering kungkwang-kungkwang—

- KWANG!

A blackish-red flare burst from the altar. Its red light ran deeper than its black, and the instant it erupted upward, it punched straight through the building's upper floors, skewering them whole. In the blink of an eye the beam had bored a hole the size of a child's torso, and it kept expanding, thickening, until it was wide as two grown men's bodies pressed together.

"Eu-ai-ia, eu-ai-ia-niiiiii!"

Amid Andrei's screaming—his teeth shattered beyond hope of intelligible speech—the flare kept surging skyward. And before long, it ceased—

- TKWAAAAAAAANG!

With a cataclysmic roar, the entire upper structure of the building vanished without a trace, leaving nothing but the basement level where they stood.

"What… what is that…?"

Ceres, walking out of the mansion with Ludwig and Vigrind in tow, stared upward in stunned disbelief.

Crimson clouds converging in a sky swallowed by pitch-black darkness—that was not a common sight. But it was happening right here, right now. Clouds red as blood-soaked cloth were gathering somewhere overhead. What looked like clouds swept back and forth across the heavens, layering and folding over themselves again and again into a thick cloud bank—until, at last, that bank began slowly to split apart.

"…We must hurry. Something is wrong."

Ceres's voice was taut with tension. Ludwig hadn't known her long, but the woman had worn her composure like a second skin the entire time—and this strained, fretful edge was nothing like her.

"We need to move. Quickly. This is no ordinary matter."

Ludwig felt exactly the same. The atmosphere was uncanny, unnatural—wrong.

"…Saintess?"

But when he got no answer from Vigrind and turned to look, he found himself at a loss too.

"Saintess, are you all right?"

Vigrind was staring up at that sky, drained of all color. Her face, pale to begin with, had gone utterly bloodless as she gazed upward.

"M-malice… there's… malice… in the sky… malice…"

"Saintess? Saintess!"

Ludwig grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Like a puppet with its strings cut, Vigrind's gaze stayed locked on the sky, her body swinging limply wherever his shaking took it.

"We have to go, NOW!"

"…Forgive me, Saintess!"

At Ceres's urging, Ludwig had no choice. He scooped Vigrind up into both arms—she was so slight he could barely feel her weight, a single fleeting observation—and then he and Ceres broke into a run.

The cultists who had thrown up a human wall around the altar—as if to keep anyone from even setting foot toward it—changed all at once, the moment it happened.

"Oohhh, Lord Berbaria…!"

"Lord Berbaria descends…!"

"Lord Berbaria…!"

They flung themselves flat to the ground, faces pressed down as though even lifting their heads would be an unpardonable sin—and now it was Kayak and the rest of the party who stood there, dumbfounded. In any case, the obstruction between them and the altar was gone; the party rushed over and began gathering up Yona and Alec.

"Yona!"

Only now did Alec see the extent of her wounds, and he cried out like a man in agony as he lunged to her side. She'd lost so much blood that she was half out of her mind, but his shaking jolted her back, and she cracked her eyes open to glare ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at him sideways.

"It hurts… you bald bastard…! I'm hurting like hell…! I screamed till my throat tore and you didn't even hear me… you bald son of a…"

"A potion—do we have a potion!?"

"I'm the Healer, why would I have a potion…"

Alec swallowed the retort—you can't even heal yourself—and whirled to Kayak and James.

"I've a healing potion here. Make use of this, quick."

The man who'd been introduced as the captain of the guard stepped forward and held out a vial. Alec snatched it up at once, its clear liquid sloshing, stripped the thread securing the paper seal, peeled it away, and poured the whole potion over Yona's wound.

"Agh, aghhh! It stings, it hurts, I said—!"

Yona's face contorted as she shrieked against the biting, burning sting.

"Hold still! It has to hurt for the medicine to work!"

"AAAAAGH!"

Only after emptying the entire bottle into her wound did Alec finally let out a breath of relief. And only then did Kayak, James, and the guards come back into focus for her.

James, seemingly without missing a beat, had already freed Rubina from the wooden plank and was holding her in his arms.

"Rubina… where's Rubina?"

Feeling human again at last, Yona looked over at the girl bundled in James's arms. Rubina, whom she'd assumed was unconscious, had woken at some point and was looking back at her—looking at her with her black eyes brimming to the brim with tears.

"Rubina… are you okay?"

In answer to her question, James silently knelt and set the girl down.

"Big sis, big siiiiiis!"

Rubina threw herself into Yona's arms. Propped against the wall barely able to sit up, Yona felt ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the pain in her shoulder come crashing back at the impact, but she bit her lip to smother the scream and stroked the girl's hair with her left hand.

"I'm sorry… Rubina, you must have been so scared."

"Big sis, big sis… it's my fault… I'll be good, I'll go back to the orphanage like you said, I'm sorry, I was bad…!"

Ugh.

Yona clenched her teeth again.

"…Let's… think about that later. Once we're out of here…"

And that was when it happened.

- Fwoooooooh…!

A wind rose without warning. A sticky, sodden wind heavy with the reek of blood swept over them where they lay exposed beneath the torn-open sky.

"Lord Berbaria—!"

"Descend upon this earth, and punish the hypocrite Heavenly God above—!"

"Lord Berbaria, awaken—!"

"Lord Berbaria—!"

The louder the cultists' prayers rang out, the more violently the wind howled. Until, at last—

A majestic voice thundered through the air. The crimson clouds that filled the sky split open at their layered heart, and within them a gleaming violet circle began to draw itself.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The voice had droned and resonated like a thousand mouths speaking in unison—and the instant it cut off, it stopped dead.

"This place shall be your end."

From the sky, the serpent descended.

Its nine heads were larger than Rubina herself, and each of its faces wore a woman's countenance. The tongues flickering endlessly from their mouths were a serpent's, and the body bearing those faces was thick as a full-grown man's torso. It was immensely long—even now, as it gazed down upon the earth and coiled through empty air, its sheer size was overwhelming.

"—So it comes to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this: useless things, all of you. The blood of one who is not even the Heavenly God's offspring—utterly insufficient for my coming."

One of the faces looked down and spoke. At the end of that gaze stood Yona and her party.

"…If we die here, does the reward money come from Evian, or from Carpatia?"

Kayak murmured.