Nice to Meet You
Nice to Meet You
I opened my eyes wide.
"...What?"
The words she had just spoken were that shocking.
And it was information I had been waiting for all this time.
"You can... get rid of this Berserk state? Permanently?"
The heaviest shackle bound to my body.
This shitty curse that tormented me so relentlessly every single month. She was telling me she could eliminate it.
I asked her.
"Just what is the method?"
Urgency seeped into my voice of its own accord.
Thump, thump. My heart pounded fiercely at a mere few words from her. I tried to calm myself, but it wasn't easy. That was how desperately I wanted this information.
If she had said it to shake my mind, then she had succeeded brilliantly.
Fortunately, perhaps because she understood my feelings as a fellow kin, she told me without dragging it out.
"Well... the method itself isn't difficult. You just have to kill the demon that is the Progenitor of your blood, then absorb a part of its body. Though I've never actually seen it, so I don't know how you absorb it."
As she said, the method itself was simple.
But as for whether putting it into action was easy, it absolutely was not. Rather, it was impossibly difficult.
I don't even know whose Demon's Blood I have, and I have to kill that bastard? When he might not have even appeared in the world yet?
Even if he had appeared, it was uncertain whether I could eliminate him. Every demon I'd encountered so far had been quite powerful.
Even if I could somehow deal with them, the moment I had to actually catch one, my confidence withered.
And besides that, I had more questions. About what she had just said. First, I looked at her and asked.
"...But how am I supposed to believe that?"
"Huh."
Nikki let out a hollow laugh. An expression that seemed to say she found my suspicion ridiculous after she had gone to the trouble of telling me.
"Believing it or not is your freedom. I merely conveyed the information."
"...Mm."
I nodded. Well, fair enough.
There was no way to verify the truth of her words anyway, since there was no proof.
Still, I had a few more things I was curious about.
"Where did you get that information?"
"I don't know the exact source either. But in the past, I once overheard the General Assembly Chair and a Branch Leader talking about it in secret."
I continued my questions.
"...Why are you telling me this?"
"I told you earlier. I've developed some rebellious feelings toward those Lemegeton bastards."
Her lips crooked upward. Her smile felt like watching a mischievous brat playing a prank.
"Still, we're fellow kin, so shouldn't I at least share this much? Those bastards who see us as tools would die before telling you anyway."
"..."
That much was certainly true. There was no way those demon-worshipping bastards would reveal a method that required killing a demon.
The more I looked at it, the more I couldn't understand it. What was so good about those damned demons that they served them so devotedly?
And looking at their abilities, they weren't exactly dropouts from somewhere either.
The high-ranking figures there were at least on the level of A-Rank Adventurers. The kind who could live loudly wherever they went.
Yet for what reason they abandoned money and honor to join a group like that... I could only find it bizarre.
'Did they run some sex-drugs cult or something?'
I might understand joining in that case.
With those idle thoughts, I gave her my thanks.
"For now... thank you. For coming all the way here to tell me, when you must be tired too."
Even if she was an enemy, she had conveyed precious information that I could not easily hear anywhere else.
Had I not heard it from her, I might well have never known.
After all, paradoxically, it was Lemegeton that knew the most about Manifestors.
And Lemegeton, just as she said, would hide this kind of information.
Of course, her reason for telling me was probably just simple rebelliousness. But regardless, it was desperately yearned-for information for me.
Nikki smiled slightly at my words. Though perhaps because her features were so fierce, even that looked a bit like a sneer.
"Heh heh, isn't your thanks a little late?"
Of course, the truth of the information was uncertain.
Even if a demon appeared, I couldn't know whether killing it would be possible. Nothing was certain.
But what did that matter? At least I had a clue. Even if it was a little distant, what mattered was that I now had a goal to look toward.
I calmed my excited heart and asked her.
"...What are you going to do now? Do you intend to leave that group?"
"Haha, no way. If I left, where could I go to survive?"
"..."
Right, Manifestors like us had nowhere to go and settle. I could understand her position.
She couldn't just leave because she was a little displeased.
"Then I'll be off. I'm tired from running all night."
With those words, she turned back the way she had come.
Her trudging figure looked somehow forlorn.
I felt a faint twinge of sympathy... but I had no intention of offering comfort. Every Manifestor carried their own sorrows, after all.
"..."
I watched her for a moment, then soon returned inside my cave.
I was just as tired as she was, after all.
That day I slept around the clock.
And two weeks later, a piece of bad news arrived.
News that was slowly becoming familiar by now.
It was news that a new demon had descended.
*
Humans are animals of forgetfulness.
Very occasionally, they even forget lessons carved in blood.
Especially once hundreds of years have passed, such things simply became stories found only in musty old history books.
The present was no different.
Starting with Andromalius, then Seere, Amdusias, and even Kimaris, though Kimaris had not been summoned.
In the short span of just over a year, humanity had already encountered news related to four demons.
And though there had been some damage, all four times they had managed to fend them off relatively smoothly.
After all, most of them were subdued quickly once a subjugation squad was formed.
Because of that, they couldn't help but think.
Perhaps these demons were actually manageable opponents?
It was the same carelessness people of the past had fallen into, but it couldn't be helped. The people of today did not know the past well.
This carelessness was especially worse among the Otherworlders.
For the people of Gaia, their very lives were at stake, but for the Otherworlders, they came back even if they died.
What was more, their skills had risen noticeably over the past few months.
Right then, if you looked through the A-Rank Adventurers, you could spot an Otherworlder here and there.
Their confidence could pierce the sky.
+
[Honestly, aren't these demon fuckers all just total jokes? lol]
Seriously, the ones that have shown up so far haven't really done much
Andromalius, that one got ganked instantly, Seere got his wrist cut off by some NPC whose face no one even knows
Amdusias was just a comedian. Aren't these guys honestly just all show?
+
[Fr lol]
[I miss you today too, Mister Seere...]
[Bet this time it'll be over fast after all the fuss again lol]
Such carelessness continued right up to the recruitment of the demon subjugation force.
Time passed, and before long, the day of the demon's advent arrived.
Just like the first subjugation battle with Andromalius, this time the location where the target would be summoned was even known.
Thanks to that, at the place where the demon would be summoned, countless people had already gathered, forming a vast sea of humanity.
Countless knights, wizards, and Otherworlders gathered and prepared for subjugation.
In that situation, the demon descended.
Its first appearance was utterly shabby. From the far end of the subjugation squad's camp, a single human figure began walking over.
Its initial form looked like a man of small, frail build. A man slightly hunched over, with an emaciated body. A figure that looked like it would collapse feebly with a single kick.
But its face was distinctly grotesque, because it shifted moment by moment as time passed.
Now the face of an old crone, now a beautiful woman, now a hideous man.
Squirm, squirm...
What was more, the movement of its facial muscles was exposed in stark detail every time its face changed. The scene of its features vanishing and recombining was utterly bizarre.
Before long, upon discovering the subjugation squad, the creature smiled politely and opened its mouth.
"Ah, you are all gathered here?"
There was no need to think long. It was one of the demon kind they had so eagerly awaited.
"Take this, monster!"
The first to charge in was one of the Otherworlders. A user among the high-level Otherworlders who had even achieved A-Rank Adventurer status.
They had likely charged in, careless at the sight of its frail form. Perhaps it was also greed to claim the glory ahead of the others.
But that Otherworlder's charge was stopped by a single word from the demon.
"Dear me, I haven't even introduced myself yet. Stop, please."
Stock-still.
At those words, the Otherworlder froze in a running stance. So the demon's cry to "Stop!" did indeed take effect.
In that state, the demon continued.
"Very good. Now, please die where you stand."
However, this time, nothing happened.
As if that much was beyond its power, no abnormality occurred in the Otherworlder's body.
Seeing that, the demon muttered as if perplexed.
"Oh dear... As I thought, imitating Lord Paimon is not easy. Well, no matter. I'll just do what I can do."
The demon flicked its finger.
A motion that seemed, at a glance, to hold no meaning at all.
But any wizard would have felt the vast amount of mana consumed in that simple gesture.
In other words, it was magic. The creature had just cast a spell without any chant whatsoever.
Shunk—!
And the result appeared swiftly. A single thorn suddenly shot up from the ground and pierced straight through the Otherworlder's chest.
"Kurgh...!"
Still frozen in place, the Otherworlder had no choice but to die, his chest pierced.
For a moment, shock clouded the people's eyes.
No matter how recklessly they had charged, they were an adventurer of the A-Rank. That meant they were at least over level 110. Yet such a person had died without any resistance.
Fwooosh.
Beyond the corpse scattering into particles of light, the opposing demon bowed and introduced itself.
"Well met. I am called Dantalion, the 71st."
Its smile remained as leisurely and courteous as ever.