Chapter 57
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 57
Chapter Title: Prelude (2)
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As half of the male demon's head exploded, demonic energy flared up from the female demon's body like roaring flames.
"F-Fucking bastard!!"
"...."
I knew nothing about their backstory—in fact, I didn't want to know....
At first, I'd wondered if they were brainwashed or something.
But the fact that they had blocked us, alongside the spiders, from attacking Fraus meant they had willingly obeyed her orders.
So, plain and simple: if I didn't kill them, I'd die. That was the only thing I needed to know.
Crunch—crack—
With the sound of bones snapping, four spider-like bony legs suddenly protruded from her back.
Her arms were still intact.... But with her legs already transformed into blades and these added on, she now looked no different from a real spider.
"You're not a demon anymore. Might as well call you a demonic beast now."
"Eek! You—you're dead meat, no matter what it takes!!"
She and I kicked off the ground at the same time, having gauged the distance between us.
Her long leg arced through the air in a perfect crescent and slashed down, while I swung my dagger—infused with holy power—in a reverse grip.
Boom—
A heavy thud vibrated the air as our blades collided.
Using the rebound force, she sprang her body back and swung her razor-sharp blade leg once more.
This time, the spider legs sprouting from her back charged in alongside it.
"Hup!"
The pressure from the onslaught grew even fiercer.
It was hard to precisely gauge whether she grew stronger the more she shed her human form.
But thanks to that, I was forced to pull out a skill I hadn't used yet, just to conserve survival time.
A hazy ring of light seeped up from the ground, then coiled around her entire body like binding ropes.
'Now it's a fair fight.'
I'd only had a single dagger, and fending off those legs swinging from every direction had been a nightmare.
She'd slowed down while I'd sped up, which covered the difference—or I would've been in real trouble.
If it had been someone else up against this thing, they'd have just gotten pummeled into submission.
'Maybe I should've used the skill from the start....'
On second thought, with the male demon still around, it might not have had this dramatic an effect.
I deflected her barrage with my pauldron while thrusting out my fist.
Thud—
My holy power-infused fist streaked in like a falling meteor and slammed into her shoulder.
With the roar of an exploding shell, her arm tumbled through the air—and I immediately spread my fingers to grip one of the spider legs jutting from her back.
"Arghhh!"
One spider leg ripped free amid her scream.
"Fuck! I don't wanna transform any more!"
The female demon spat nonsense as she fired spider silk from her wrists to bind my movements, then retreated.
"If you just stay out of our way while we take down Fraus, we won't chase you even if you run away from here."
We needed to reach Fraus as fast as possible—fighting these demons was already a loss for us.
It was a proposal born from the thought that ending the battle quickly and moving on wouldn't be a bad deal, even if it meant fighting them again later.
"Fuck, if we just leave, we're the ones who end up dead."
"Then there's no helping it."
"You fucking prick. You're an even bigger fucking prick than us."
What was I supposed to do if both options pissed her off?
'Then don't become a demon in the first place.'
Irritation surged toward the woman, flapping her lips like the victim despite standing on the opposite side of humanity.
'Whatever. No more time to play around.'
I ignored whatever she was saying and prepared to press the attack.
Crunch—crack—
Then a bizarre noise came from the male demon's body, which had been lying behind her.
Bones breaking?
No—bones reconstructing?
Whatever it was, one thing was clear: I couldn't just leave it be.
I immediately charged toward the man.
Stab—
"Urghhh, no, Ki-nam.... No more...."
The woman intercepted my strike with her own body, then clutched the male demon—whom she called Ki-nam, completely ignoring me—and shed tears.
'...What?'
The fading black light in the man's chest began pulsing like a heartbeat, swelling in size.
'A dagger won't cut it.'
To pierce through the woman who'd started sacrificing herself to protect the male demon, I needed something bigger—with more destructive power than a dagger.
Sensing the ominous vibe, I hurriedly sought out my greatsword, spotted it lying far off on the ground, and bolted toward it.
Grind—crunch—
The noises continued in the meantime.
The male demon's back split open vertically along his spine, and enormous legs began forcing their way out of his narrow frame, one after another.
"...Damn."
By the time I stood before them again with my greatsword in hand, all eight legs had emerged, propping up the body and hoisting it into the air.
"...Damn."
Crunch—crack—
The male demon's transformation completed in an instant, and the massive torso that burst from his body soon morphed into something resembling a gigantic spider.
In sheer size, it dwarfed Sicarius. Just its body height seemed to be around 6 meters....
At that scale, the thing itself bordered on a superpower.
It defied logic that such a colossal body could emerge from that tiny frame—but no one had time to nitpick physics laws anymore.
Heck, I was wielding powers incomprehensible to ordinary gods myself, so it was only natural that these humans, who'd abandoned their humanity for monster-granted strength, possessed extraordinary abilities too.
'Trouble is, just how strong is this thing that crawled out of the guy I thought was dead.'
Purple exoskeleton that looked rock-solid at a glance, sharp protrusions jutting haphazardly all over.
Black liquid—saliva or venom?—dripping from fangs the size of a person.
One of its antenna-like legs, now skewering the female demon's abdomen.
True to its unknowable origins, its appearance was grotesquely alien.
'....'
The spider beast raised its antenna leg and gazed at her through its eight crimson-black eyes.
But the woman—unlike her ferociously relentless attacks moments ago—just wept miserably, even with her gut impaled.
"Sob sob... Ki-nam, in the end—"
And....
Crunch—crack—
She became its prey before she could finish her sentence, her black light swallowed up by the beast's far larger darkness.
"Such bullshit...."
I spat curses in place of the dead woman as I gripped my greatsword.
Sure, it was tragic: a precious person turned into a mindless monster, and the woman devoured by that very person.
But my situation was just as pathetic—having nearly finished them off, only for an even stronger foe to burst out.
Suddenly, one of its legs blurred, and the amplitude of the visible waves around it swelled.
Craaaack—!
The moment the shockwave from its lightning-fast leg clashing against my greatsword rippled across my skin, a scene flashed before my eyes and vanished.
It began with a man and woman fleeing from something.
And then.
Another clash of blades, and this time I saw the two of them trapped somewhere.
"...I said I don't care about your backstory!"
[Borrowing the power 'Mountain-Uprooting, World-Blanketing Might' of the ownerless greatsword's former master.]
[Limited Time 00:00:05]
My greatsword—gathering holy power—blurred.
Rooooar—!!
The paved road cratered in a semicircle, burying the beast within.
And even in that instant, visions of the man and woman's past kept flashing by.
The pair standing amid a pile of corpses.
"Damn it, 'You're so pitiful, so I have to die for you'? That's the shit you're trying to pull?"
I spat the words like they were rotten food in my mouth while glaring at the beast's retaliation hurtling toward me in midair.
No room for distractions. I had to focus entirely on this fight.
Four legs charging from my blind spot brimmed with ominous, dark mana.
'Can't block those.'
I scrapped any thought of parrying, instead kicking the greatsword's hilt with my instep and using the recoil to retreat.
Despite its massive bulk, it was shockingly agile, attacking with its razor-sharp legs just like when it was a demon.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
'Need one big hit to put this thing down for good.'
There was a fundamental difference in our weight classes.
With that size and power, even a glancing blow could be fatal.
The longer the fight dragged on, the worse it got for me.
I needed something to neutralize it in one shot.
Dodging its spring-loaded blade legs this way and that, I slid under its torso.
A shotgun was suddenly in my hands, and the rapid cycle of aiming and reloading peppered its soft underbelly with stinging steel shot.
'Grah!!!'
Blue ichor cascaded like a waterfall from its belly, soaking me—followed by a sizzling hiss, smoke, and the stench of burning flesh.
My skin melted, searing pain clouding my mind.
But this poison had to be weaker than Sicarius's.
'The pain I'm feeling is an illusion. The pain I'm feeling is an illusion. The pain I'm feeling is an illusion.'
As long as I could still move.... It was nothing.
I'd dealt with enemies like this plenty of times before.
Slipping out behind it, I barely clung to consciousness and eyed the beast with its gut in ruins.
Its body had grown stronger, but had it lost its reason in the process?
It paid no heed to its own damage, blindly unleashing obvious attacks at me.
I punched aside the flat of its now-slower blade leg—and once more, an unwanted scene flashed into view before vanishing.
A group of over a dozen people, including the couple, wrists bound in spider silk as they were dragged toward Garak Market.
A stark depiction of the world's current state.
'Sad? For me?'
The sight made thick sorrow twitch at the corners of my eyes for a moment.
But this wasn't my emotion.
The senses transmitted through the waves of time immediately reminded me that this feeling didn't belong to the current me.
Probably some cunningly transferred emotion from the beast.
"...Damn it. If you wanted to tug at my sympathy, you should've done it way earlier."
It pissed me off that it kept shoving these scenes at me.
I wasn't even sure who I was pissed at.
Just the world, the monsters. Myself. Pissed me off.
One thing was certain: I felt guilt.
Because I was the one with the [Purification] skill that could have saved them.
'Goddamn it....'
I knew full well I couldn't save everyone.
I'd never been that devoted or selfless to begin with, and I didn't have the mana regenerated to use the skill anyway.
But apparently, conscience wasn't some neat, logical thing.
Seeing it hurt this bad proved it.
Thud... thud... thud.
I could see its movements gradually slowing.
It had burst from a body I'd thought was as good as dead.
It had grown even stronger by devouring the woman, but with a gaping hole in its gut and no thought given to defense—just relentless attacks—it was dying.
All I could offer it was rest.
"...."
Dodging its lunging leg, I used it as a launchpad to leap into the air.
Grabbing the sword hilt embedded in its head, I slammed down with gravity's full force—the greatsword shattered its exoskeleton, bisecting all eight eyes.
Splatter—
With a wet splurt, its bisected head spilled innards everywhere.
"Huu...."
I shook the blue ichor off my greatsword and slung it on my back.
A system message announcing the battle's end floated before my eyes.
[Killed Demon (魔人) Choi Ki-nam. Absorbed 14,971 hours.]
[Atlnak becomes aware that her demon has died. She marvels.]
'Atlnak? So they weren't Fraus's crew?'
I'd assumed they were her minions since we encountered them en route to her gateway, but these were demons handpicked by Star Lord Atlnak herself.
'Why the hell were they here?'
I had plenty of guesses, but I cut the train of thought short.
'Doesn't matter. They're all gonna die anyway.'
I'd just decided that.
At first, I'd wondered if killing them was truly the only option, even at the risk—but this fight settled it for good.
Kill Atlnak.
Monsters and us—we could never coexist.
- Boom! Bang!
I turned my steps toward the distant explosions.