Water Glass
Water Glass
I had just experienced the best Berserk ever.
Had a Berserk episode ever gone this smoothly before?
There had been a few times when Berserk A triggered and I splurged on Holy Water to get through it without much trouble.
But this was the first time I had ended a Berserk feeling this good.
Was this truly the power of sex? I had been missing out on half of my life.
Even if I had done it in a daze because of Berserk, I had no regrets.
I would have to make use of it again from time to time.
Anyway, with this month's Berserk over like that, it was now time to carry on with everyday life as usual.
I was a criminal with a bounty on my head, true, but my daily life was still fairly peaceful.
Everyone had realized that trying to catch a small fry worth only five million berry just wasn't cost-effective.
Whether they could even enter the forest and capture me was uncertain, and on top of that there was the natural obstacle of the Forbidden Forest.
If they got injured during a fight, getting back out was a whole ordeal in itself.
They needed the strength to fight monsters on the way back, too.
Because of that, the intruders who actually entered the forest were fewer than one might think.
'Makes sense. Five million berry isn't enough to contain someone of my calibre.'
Thanks to that, I had been living just fine for a whole week since Berserk ended.
And today was the day I regularly received information.
The person who'd come this time wasn't Yoo Chae-rin but Im Ha-neul.
I definitely remembered seeing her last time too, yet she felt oddly like someone I had not seen in a long while.
Watching her descend slowly from the sky, I gave a casual greeting.
"Hey, long time no see. Looks like you came instead of Chae-rin this time."
"Yeah. She came down with severe body aches and ended up taking about two weeks off streaming. Hoo... so I had a little free time."
At those words, I felt a brief pang of guilt.
The cause of those body aches was painfully obvious. It had to be because of what we had done a week ago. Even by my own reckoning, I had worked her pretty hard.
'Did she tell her, I wonder?'
With that thought, I feigned ignorance and asked.
"Body aches? What happened all of a sudden?"
"I don't know. She said she did some kind of intense workout, but I didn't ask any more than that."
Hearing that, I nodded inwardly.
Apparently, she hadn't said anything. Well, Chae-rin wasn't the type to go around talking about that sort of thing. It was a sensitive topic to tell others, too.
I smiled wryly to myself for a moment and thought.
'...This is a problem.'
Last time, Ha-neul had hidden a secret. This time, it was exactly the opposite.
Now I had a secret I couldn't tell Chae-rin. Just thinking about how to resolve it already gave me a headache.
'Eh, it'll work out somehow.'
But that thought lasted only a moment. I decided to be optimistic about it.
We had done the deed, but that didn't mean my relationship with Chae-rin had developed into something like that of lovers. That sort of relationship was burdensome to me too.
A huge wall stood between us in the first place.
The great wall of NPC and Otherworlder.
...Right, NPC.
It was an expression I truly hated, but to the Otherworlders, I was ultimately just an NPC.
A separate world existed for them to return to, and this place was ultimately inside a game.
It was no different for the women who were close to me.
Sometimes I forgot it, but it was an unchanging truth.
Thinking about it left me feeling bitter for no reason.
'Seriously...'
Of course, I didn't dwell on it. Thinking too deeply about it would only harm my mental health.
I already had plenty of stress. It wasn't a topic I wanted to think about for long.
"So, what's up today?"
So I quickly changed the subject.
"Ah, don't be surprised and listen carefully."
At my question, Ha-neul deliberately set the mood, as if the story she had brought today was especially important. Sure enough, it was a little different from usual.
"Dantalion's been subjugated."
The demon with an exceptionally long lifespan, Dantalion, had finally been subjugated.
The bastard who had harmed me had finally gone back to hell.
But I couldn't feel as pleased as I had expected.
An inexplicable unease crept over me.
"..."
I stared blankly at Ha-neul for a moment.
Through the gaps in the green leaves, the clear, cloudless sky was visible.
The weather was crisp and dry, without even a breath of wind.
Seeing the eerily calm weather, I made a small prediction.
'Rain must be coming soon.'
It was a thought about the weather.
*
The subjugation had been carried out in secret.
Dantalion himself was rather slow-footed, but he always moved together with Harold, a branch leader who was exceptionally fast.
Because of that, even when they made painstaking efforts to track him, he'd slip away like an eel as often as not.
Dantalion was a wizard in the first place, so a subjugation squad relying on sheer numbers alone would only increase the casualties.
Therefore, the Knight Order had set out for this subjugation with every preparation in place.
Led by the Fourth Knight Commander Rayleigh, they had assembled a small elite force and taken the field.
Even before the battle began, they spread a net of encirclement and blocked off every escape route.
Indeed, with that level of preparation, even Dantalion was helpless.
Crack!
"Ghnk!"
Along with the sound of a barrier shattering, Dantalion's chest was slashed diagonally in a great gash.
The barrier had been simply insufficient to block the blade of the Knight Commander, coated in Holy Water.
To make matters worse, even the spells flying in from all directions were rendered useless before Rayleigh's graceful swordsmanship.
"At last, I cut down a demon with my own blade."
Trickle—blood seeped from the split chest. Clearly a fatal wound.
Lacking any particular regeneration ability, Dantalion would soon vanish. It was effectively as good as subjugated already.
"Gah! The encirclement's been breached!"
"No, seize him!"
"He's too fast!"
By that point, Harold, who'd been with him, had already fled swiftly.
The moment he'd judged it impossible to escape together, he'd forcibly punched a hole through the encirclement on his own.
He'd suffered injuries both large and small in the process, but thanks to that, Harold had gotten away.
It was a quickness of judgement and decisiveness in action truly befitting a prodigy of escape.
Seeing that, Rayleigh let out a hollow laugh.
"Hah, now you're even betrayed by your own ally."
"Heh heh, well, it's as I expected. I was the one who asked it of him. I told him, should a dangerous situation arise, to flee alone."
But even in such circumstances, the smile never left Dantalion's face. As if he'd anticipated a situation like this would come someday.
Rayleigh raised his sword and asked.
"Thanks to that, you'll be extinguished today. Yet you speak as if it's nothing."
"It's quite all right. The groundwork is already all laid, after all... I shall simply wait at my leisure in the Demon Realm for the appointed time."
Rayleigh thought the word 'groundwork' sounded rather significant.
What did he mean by that? Was he saying yet another demon would pop out?
If so, that was dire trouble indeed. Saying the damage caused by demons was already great would be an understatement.
Still, he couldn't show weakness before a demon, so Rayleigh kept a staunch bearing and said.
"It matters not whatever demon emerges. The latent strength of humanity remains intact. We shall swiftly sweep away Lemegeton and return to our daily lives."
"What? Pft-hah, pft-hahahah!"
At those words, Dantalion burst into hearty laughter. As if he'd heard something utterly ridiculous.
Seeing that, Rayleigh felt slightly awkward.
After laughing for a long while, Dantalion spoke again.
"All of you have one serious misunderstanding."
Plop—
The bastard sat down on the ground. As if to say, let's have a chat.
With that large wound gaping in his chest, he couldn't flee anyway, and even if he did, he wouldn't live long.
At that seemingly transcendent manner, Rayleigh raised his alertness.
Whether Rayleigh did or not, Dantalion began to talk.
"Six hundred years ago, in your world, Decarabia fell from the sky. That would be the first demon you encountered. Correct?"
Rayleigh flinched in surprise for a moment. He hadn't expected to hear a tale from the history books again from a demon's mouth.
Rayleigh cautiously speculated.
"...It seems the Lemegeton lot told you."
"No. I heard the news in the Demon Realm. He wasn't of our faction, to be sure, but he did go to the Human Realm and come back having lost a part of his body. There was no way the information wouldn't spread."
This was a story he didn't know. It must be about the Demon Realm, the place the bastard had originally lived.
Now that he thought about it, he seemed to recall vaguely hearing that even when demons died, they didn't permanently vanish, but went to the Demon Realm.
Dantalion continued.
"At any rate, after that, over the course of six hundred years, three more demons appeared, up until Andromalius showed up."
"And since Andromalius, four demons have appeared in total, including me. All in just over a year."
"Does that not strike you as odd?"
The bastard asked, smiling as if pleased. His bloodstained face squirmed and sketched the features of a vicious man. The face was strangely chilling.
Rayleigh glared at the bastard with a look of distaste and retorted.
"That's... because those Lemegeton lot keep supporting you, I'd imagine. Demonkin have been appearing more often lately too."
"Heh heh, do you truly think that's the whole of the reason?"
Dantalion continued.
"Certainly, the emergence of Demonkin and the faithful of Lemegeton finding Altars and offering Sacrifices played their part. But is that all? No. It was merely the falling of a few droplets into a cup already full of water."
These were rather significant words.
Wasn't he practically saying that every Demon Advent until now had been an entirely natural occurrence?
Thinking that, Rayleigh felt a brief chill run down his spine.
Just then, the bastard opened his mouth again.
"Armageddon (Ἁρμαγεδών) is not far off. No matter how much you humans thrash about, your fate is already decided."
"...You damned wretch."
Having heard enough, the Knight Commander raised his sword overhead.
He'd already gathered plenty of information, and the bastard's talk was starting to verge on a curse.
Slick—!
With a crisp sound of severance, the bastard's body quickly began to fade away.
"By that time, humanity shall be bowing its heads low before my king..."
And so, what remained was one of the bastard's severed ears.
With this, the demon's subjugation was splendidly accomplished. But only an unsettled feeling remained in his heart.
'If the bastard's words are true... it's a grave matter.'
Wasn't he essentially saying that another demon would appear someday?
Why, of all times, were demons that had only descended three times in six hundred years now popping out left and right during his lifetime...?
He felt a touch of resentment, but what they had to do hadn't changed.
To prepare in advance until the next demon appeared.
To conserve the priests by not sending them into battle as much as possible, and to produce Holy Water.
To eliminate in advance anything that might become a threat in the future.
Yes, for instance... the demon's child that the Empire had failed to capture several decades ago.
"..."
The eyes of the Imperial Knight Rayleigh looked toward a place far, far away.