The Sacrifice of Viscount Dickens
Rumble.
A heavy tremor rolled through the chamber. Sonia staggered before catching herself against the wall.
“What the hell? An earthquake?”
“No. The Star Serpent has begun to move.”
“Star Serpent? That snake from earlier?”
“Yes.”
“It was huge, sure… but a snake crawling underground causes earthquakes?”
“The Star Serpent travels through the earth itself. What we just felt was the vibration of it burrowing deeper.”
Sonia narrowed her eyes at Elbridge.
“How do you know so much about it?”
“I read about it in a book.”
“…”
A faint tremor continued to ripple outward.
There were no windows, so they couldn’t see what was happening outside. Even so, Elbridge could guess how events were unfolding.
He closed his eyes for a moment, focusing every sense, then spoke.
“It seems the Star Serpent is coming this way. Our luck is poor.”
Sonia answered at once. “I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.”
Elbridge looked at her. She added, “Earlier. Didn’t you say the Star Serpent hates fire?”
“Ah.”
Only then did he remember that Rombel had set the place ablaze to cover his escape.
With its possible paths now limited, the creature heading in their direction was almost inevitable.
Time was running out.
Sonia turned to Viscount Dickens. “Father. Tell me. Who did this to you?”
Her gaze fixed on his mouth. But the viscount’s lips did not move.
Instead, Elbridge looked into his eyes.
The moment he met those brown irises, understanding struck him. Viscount Dickens had no intention of revealing the culprit to his daughter.
He had been reduced to this miserable state, yet he remained a father.
Viscount Dickens did not want his beloved daughter dragged into a perilous fight.
Rumble.
Another earth-shaking roar echoed.
The viscount’s office trembled, and then the ceiling split open. Blood poured from the fissure.
“Father!”
At the same time, the glass beads embedded in the ceiling shook dangerously.
Viscount Dickens’s grotesquely mutated arm flailed slowly, but it wasn’t enough. One bead closest to the tear slipped free and fell.
“Hup!”
Elbridge launched himself forward and caught it at the last instant.
Yet faint smoke was already leaking from the bead’s edge.
Sonia recoiled. “What is that? It’s cracked, isn’t it? It’s broken!”
She wasn’t mistaken. A thin fracture ran across its surface.
But Elbridge said nothing. He studied the bead in silence.
Strange.
The cracked section held no dust. Instead, dust clung to the opposite side—the smooth, polished face.
He lifted the bead and compared it to the spot where it had been lodged.
It was clear. The fracture had been buried inside the viscount’s own flesh that formed the ceiling.
“It didn’t just break,” Elbridge said. “It was already cracked.”
He reached up again and pulled free another bead that was moments from falling. It too bore a faint crack.
Elbridge examined the concentration of beads, then the position of the viscount’s two mutated arms.
Just as he thought. The beads were densely packed in the space between those arms.
Viscount Dickens…
A scene painted itself in his mind: a knight clutching cracked seals to his chest, desperately trying to contain the smoke leaking from them. Knowing his own body was changing, yet refusing to step away.
…Damn it.
Elbridge turned to Sonia. “Can you reseal these cracks?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. To cover an unsealed demon again, you’d need a seal powerful enough to completely overwhelm it.”
“I see.”
Rumble.
The tremors were growing closer.
The time granted to them was almost gone.
Elbridge stepped directly in front of Viscount Dickens.
The viscount wanted his daughter to live without ever learning the identity of the one who had done this.
But Elbridge needed to know. Even if it went against the man’s final wish.
“Viscount Dickens. Who lured you into this trap?”
No answer came.
“The Deer Horn Order.”
Elbridge’s gaze remained locked on those brown eyes.
Anyone with sufficient resolve could keep their mouth shut and guard a secret.
Eyes, however, were harder to control. Unless one had been professionally trained, emotion would always bleed through.
Not the Deer Horn Order.
“The Echoes of War Order. The Laurel Wreath Order.”
Still no reaction.
“The Bloodied Spear Order.”
The instant the words left his mouth, the subtle trembling in the viscount’s eyes stopped completely.
People sometimes deliberately still their gaze to hide their thoughts.
But eyes that become unnaturally motionless are the clearest proof that something is being concealed.
Elbridge shifted his body slightly.
Human eyes naturally track movement. Yet the viscount’s did not follow. He was deliberately staring into empty air.
Elbridge murmured, “So it’s the Bloodied Spear Order.”
The eyes remained fixed. But Elbridge caught the slight widening of the eyelids.
Hatred and fury surged in Sonia’s voice.
“Father. The Bloodied Spear? Those bastards did this to you?”
The viscount’s eyes continued staring into nothingness.
That unnatural gaze gave Sonia all the confirmation she needed. Her body began to tremble with rage.
Elbridge thought, How far does the Bloodied Spear Order’s involvement go? High Paladin Cowin? The senior knights? Or even the younger ones like Felix?
There was no way to know yet. That was a question for later.
The tremors had grown impossible to ignore.
The Star Serpent was carving its way through the underground directly toward them.
The chaos it embodied was ‘movement.’
Around the Star Serpent, everything moved. Sleeping humans woke. Animals fled.
Even things that should not be able to move, moved. Buildings swayed. The earth split. Sturdy pillars collapsed.
That was how a creature with no claws could swim through solid ground.
It glided through the churning soil like a fish through water. The Star Serpent needed no malice. Cities simply collapsed in its wake.
Walls and ceiling tore open in multiple places, blood pouring freely.
A dozen cracked beads dropped with wet thuds and began spewing smoke.
Damn.
Viscount Dickens’s mouth opened and closed without pause.
Go. Sonia. Go. Sonia. Go. Sonia. Go Sonia. Go. Sonia.
It was not a simple command or plea.
Creak—
The lord’s office—the very flesh of Viscount Dickens—began to contract and writhe.
Sounds of breaking and crushing filled the air.
Elbridge understood his intention at once.
Even the slightest further movement would awaken another dozen demons. There was no way to stop it.
Just as he had used his own body to plug the broken seals, the viscount meant to block them until the very last moment. To buy his daughter even a few more seconds.
But Sonia showed no sign of leaving. It was as if she intended to perish alongside her father.
That was why the viscount’s eyes turned to Elbridge instead.
Then his mouth moved.
Please.
Elbridge clenched his jaw and seized Sonia, tucking her under his arm exactly as before.
“We’re leaving.”
“No! No! Father—!”
She thrashed wildly. But Viscount Dickens’s brown eyes simply smiled with gentle warmth.
With Sonia secured at his side, Elbridge burst through the door and sprinted down the corridor.
Sonia twisted her head to look back. Beyond the doorway, the viscount’s office was contracting violently. Blood and flesh merged, erasing every empty space.
A sight so grotesque it would have been rare even in nightmares.
Yet Sonia still reached out toward her father’s final form.
“Father… Father…”
Elbridge raced toward the bent hallway, kicking off the floor with all his strength. Soon the view outside the castle came into sight.
The scene created by the Star Serpent was unlike anything left behind by the Black Giant, the Flower Demon, or the God of the Flowing Water.
Boom—
The entire Dickens Territory heaved like a sea of living rock.
The crows had been right. Today was their final show. Soon the viscount’s domain would vanish beneath the earth, swallowed into ancient records.
Giant boulders flew in every direction like mere pebbles.
Elbridge held Sonia tight and ran across the violently shaking ground.
Which way?
At that moment, the Goddess of the Rusty Shield delivered her oracle.
East, Elbridge.
There was no time to hesitate. Elbridge sprinted eastward, leaping lightly over the half-collapsed inner wall.
Before long his body was enveloped in a faint white glow. The goddess’s power shielded him.
Delayed Death.
A divine authority that let one survive unless the brain or heart was destroyed.
It was a power normally requested only in truly lethal battles, yet now it wrapped around him. Still—
It’s not enough.
The ground twisted and shattered without pause. Ordinary earth rose like castle walls while house-sized boulders scattered like gravel.
When a slab of ground the size of a building flew straight at them, Sonia screamed.
“Kyaaaa!”
“Close your eyes!”
Elbridge kicked off the ground, used the rising debris as footing, and leaped again.
He bounded from one churning mass to the next. While fighting for balance, a rock twice the size of a human head hurtled toward him. He batted it aside with his shield.
Bang!
There was no time to dodge the smaller stones the size of fists.
He simply narrowed his eyes and took the hits. Blood flowed. Thanks to the goddess’s protection, however, none were fatal.
Keep moving, Elbridge.
He moved.
Every second was a life-or-death choice. A dry chuckle escaped him.
All this destruction, and the creature bears no malice whatsoever…
His superhuman reflexes still let him dodge the worst of the rocks and wreckage, but he held no certainty that he could escape the territory unharmed.
Sonia, who could not be protected by the goddess’s power, was in far greater danger. A single stone the size of a fist would kill her.
What truly felt hopeless wasn’t the flying debris.
A massive fissure created by the twisting earth now blocked their path.
Creak—
Beneath the warped ground, a black serpent swam like a fish through water.
White starlight like the Milky Way flowed across its scales.
The Star Serpent.
Seeing it again after so long filled Elbridge with awe rather than enmity.
Just as it had in the distant past.
He looked up. Burning buildings stood in the distance.
As expected, the serpent’s twisting had not yet reached them. If they could make it that far, the worst of the danger would be behind them.
The problem was the enormous chasm splitting the ground.
“H-how…?”
The fissure was still widening at this very moment.
It gaped like an abyss waiting for prey.
Elbridge measured the distance to the far side.
At full speed, I could clear it. Barely.
The problem was that full speed was impossible.
Bedrock kept erupting everywhere. Debris flew in all directions. Even he could not run in a straight line under these conditions.
If only Sonia could cast a spell, but she was still lost in shock and grief.
Why did the goddess direct me east? Should I turn back? Is there another path? Or is this the last one?
While his throbbing mind raced for an answer, someone watched him from between the massive clouds filling the night sky.
The being beyond the clouds spoke.
Believe and just run, you idiot.
The unexpected oracle rang out like thunder.
Elbridge had never heard the voice before, yet he recognized the god at once. Had they not spoken once before, however indirectly?
The God of the Spring Rain.
He thought of the God of the Flowing Water.
When heavenly gods intervened too deeply in mortal affairs, danger followed.
In other words, this god had chosen to accept that risk to help them now.
Then I have to trust.
Elbridge sprinted straight toward the massive fissure.
Sonia, half-dazed, suddenly thrashed in his grip.
“What are you doing? What the hell are you—!”
There was no time to explain.
The ground twisted again. Boulders larger than a man’s head flew in every direction.
Yet unlike before, none of the debris blocked his path.
It was an unnaturally perfect stroke of luck. Like running between raindrops in a downpour.
So this is the power of the God of the Spring Rain…
The short run-up ended.
Elbridge kicked off the ground and leaped toward the far side of the newly formed cliff.
Sonia screamed at the top of her lungs.
“You’ve lost your mind—!”
While suspended in mid-air, Elbridge glanced down. The black abyss waited with its maw wide open.
He was not afraid of heights, but even he felt his hands and feet go cold.
The short glide ended. His body barely caught the opposite ledge.
Crash—
The landing was far from graceful.
Elbridge rolled twice before stopping. Sonia, who had been flung free, rolled a couple of times herself.
He staggered upright and looked back.
Beyond the chasm, the land still writhed in the Star Serpent’s wake. Yet on this side, everything was strangely calm.
Elbridge stood beside a burning building and stared across the fissure.
A moment later, more than a dozen demons burst from the lord’s castle and soared into the night sky.
Sonia collapsed where she stood, eyes fixed on the horrifying sight.
Elbridge did not know much about Viscount Dickens.
A murderer who had visited a nameless village and lured an innkeeper’s son to his death.
Yet he had also been a trusted knight and lord. Sonia’s father. That was all.
Elbridge wondered whether the viscount had left this life without regrets.
Surely not.
That was why he murmured softly, “May your next life be free of regret.”
They had cleared one hurdle, but safety remained far away.
Elbridge gripped Sonia once more with his powerful arm and ran onward through the burning ruins of Dickens Territory.