31. Demon Church
31. Demon Church
That evening, Senior Andy held a drinking party in his quarters.
There was no grand reason for it, but as it happened, I had something to tell him today, so the timing worked out well.
"Senior, the dungeon exploration practical is next week, isn't it?"
"Dungeon exploration~? You might as well call it a dungeon picnic. I was just there on a preliminary inspection yesterday. Why are you asking about it all of a sudden?"
Senior Andy, who had been sipping wine from his glass, asked as though the question baffled him.
The dungeon exploration the new students did every year like an annual event was, in truth, a trivial class.
"A preliminary inspection...? You didn't find anything strange?"
"It's a place we visit once every year. What could possibly be strange about it?"
Ordinarily, dungeons were unpredictable hellholes full of traps and monsters that could spring up anywhere, so cramped that even swinging a weapon properly was a struggle if you weren't used to them.
The dungeon exploration practical involved going into a dungeon that had been practically lobotomized and turned into something like a theme park, with nearly all the dangerous elements removed, just so students could get a feel for the atmosphere.
Because the dungeon would collapse if the boss was cleared, the boss room had been sealed, and magic had been cast over the entire dungeon to drastically lower its difficulty.
As for how easy it had become—even farmers who had never held a blade in their lives could wander around that dungeon without a care, which says it all.
Unless you tripped and broke your nose or something, there was absolutely no problem.
Truly, there was no picnic like this picnic.
"Senior, did you know the Demon Church has zealots hiding inside the academy?"
If only there hadn't been any heretics, that is.
"Pfft!! Wh-what? How did they get in?"
Senior Andy spat out his wine the moment he heard my warning.
"They infiltrated one or two at a time, probably posing as staff. By now, they may even be preparing the descent ritual."
"This is a huge problem...! What do we do about this...? There hasn't been a single incident in nearly five years, so why this year... why are you telling me this now...!"
If students from his own class were to die because of the schemes of heretics like the Demon Church, his future would be plunged into darkness.
Senior Andy shot me a look that asked why I had left it alone if I'd known all along, but we wouldn't have been able to deal with it unless we assembled like this in the first place.
"The important part starts now. Just catching one or two at a time is an endless task, isn't it? Have you ever caught the Demon Church just once or twice?"
"For me, it's been once or twice...!"
The Demon Church was a seditious organization aiming to overthrow the state. Both the Empire and the Imperial Knights continually subjugated them, so during my time in the knights' order, I had smashed countless heretics to pieces.
Naturally, I had assumed Senior Andy had been there beside me, so hearing that they had only worked the higher-ups to the bone came as a shock.
"If you don't know, just listen. According to my investigation, the ones who were scattered have now gathered and are about to begin the ritual in earnest. Now is our chance."
"Shouldn't we inform the academy?"
"No. If they catch on, they'll all go into hiding, and we won't catch even half of them."
The Demon Church was like cockroaches.
Catching one or two dealt no real blow whatsoever.
If they found out you were hunting them, they'd hide like dead mice, and just when you thought they'd passed, they'd gather again.
It was best to think of it the same way as catching cockroaches.
Since picking them off one by one was pointless... you had to wipe them out all at once while they were teeming in the nest.
"It's easier to catch them if you make them think... they haven't been discovered by anyone. That chance is today."
Assuming those bastards had chosen the day of the dungeon exploration practical as their day of execution, there could be no better day than today for them to gather.
"I'm going to slaughter every last one of those bastards today."
The scattered cockroaches had gathered in one place, so it was time to exterminate them all.
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The Demon Church was an unlicensed, unauthorized religious organization that worshipped the Great Demons of hell.
Unlike the Church, which worshipped God and promised a paradise where all believers would be happy—a heavenly afterlife—the Demon Church worshipped Great Demons and promised to manifest hell on this world: a paradise where non-believers burned in boiling oil and believers were happy.
The zealots, who denied all doctrines of the Church, denied God, and insisted that the hell of the Great Demons was the true paradise to descend upon the earth, would commit any act without hesitation to prove their 'faith.'
Merely insulting God—a definite power that brought all kinds of miracles, proving Its omnipotence through Divine Power—made one a heretic. The Demon Church, which dared to claim it would manifest hell on this world, was brazenly designated by the Empire as a state-overthrowing force.
The Inquisitors of the Church and the various knight orders of the Empire ran themselves ragged hunting them, but like cockroaches, they continuously grew their power in places beyond the reach of others' eyes.
'They're just... pyramid scheme scammers.'
I believed in the Church rather than the Demon Church.
The Divine Power granted in exchange for faith was, while not omnipotent, a miracle with certain effects.
The Demon Church claimed that a believer could make a contract with a demon by paying a price to have their wishes granted... but in the first place, if demons actually kept their promises properly, would they be called demons?
Even in the original story, all the demon-touched who contracted with demons met bad ends.
Back when I was in my prime in the Imperial Knights, I had executed countless heretics as well.
The Demon Church was an incredibly troublesome group.
They disguised themselves as ordinary people, then covered themselves completely in black robes so they didn't even know each other's identities, making it impossible to root them out just because you caught one.
Nor was it a group weak in force.
There were demon-touched who actually summoned demons or contracted with them to house demonic power within their bodies, and if you didn't deal with them, they were troublesome to fight.
This was because demons, being otherworldly entities, could not even be injured by normal means.
To deal with demons, there were broadly three methods.
First, the miracle of God, Divine Power.
Second, pure substances.
Not just anything pure, but only a few special kinds among pure substances were effective.
Things like blocks of pure wood wouldn't work, but pure silver, salt, and the like were easy to find nearby...
Rare metals like Atamantite and Mithril, the higher their purity, the greater the damage they could inflict on demons.
And the third method was...
"Guurgh...!!"
"Ugh, disgusting."
Blood burst out along with the zealot's dying scream.
The zealots' blood splattered all over my body was revolting.
Because it was a night raid, the blood wasn't even clearly visible on the black-painted longsword, but my entire body was drenched in the stuff.
Where all this blood had come from was obvious just by glancing around a little.
Inside the gloomy cave, countless people lay collapsed, having lost their heads.
The reason their heads had been obsessively severed was due to their characteristics...
Occasionally, zealots who accepted a demon's power into their bodies would regenerate even severed limbs in an instant, so they were decapitated with a focus on the head, which could not regenerate.
Saying you only cut off the neck was easy in words, but in reality, it was an incredibly difficult feat.
But I could do it as if it were nothing.
Someone who didn't know might find the corpses with just their necks cleanly blown off frightful, but a person walking the path of the sword would applaud the realm I had reached.
'Or maybe not. That was a pretty crazy bastard line of thought just now... I should correct that.'
This place was an inconspicuous cave near the deep forest.
It wasn't the dungeon where the incident would occur, but... the bastards planning to pull something in the dungeon had all gathered here.
Though they were gone now, that is.
"Still, it's a relief it ended sooner than expected."
Most of them had been lives as worthless as flies.
There were no demon-touched, nor were there any particularly formidable combat personnel.
After all, preparing a ritual didn't demand strength.
With this, the most troublesome bastards for the day of the dungeon exploration practical were dead, so I could rest easy for now.
"Hmm? This feeling is... Magical energy is seeping out from somewhere...?"
Suddenly, I sensed a bad omen.
Magical energy began to pour out uncontrollably from the pentagram like black smoke from the scene of a fire.
A ritual was starting even though no one was there.
"Everyone's dead... the crazy bastards made it trigger automatically the moment they died...!"
It happened occasionally.
They had rigged it so that if they died, their deaths themselves would serve as sacrifices to activate the ritual.
Swallowing the blood of the dead zealots, the magic circle glowed.
The black magical energy coalesced around the life force of the dead heretics as a focal point, taking form.
The demon, fully formed from body to limbs, appeared, boasting the horn atop its head.
[Who has called me...]
-Seogeok
"Oh, no one called you. Go back."
Following a pure white trajectory, the demon's neck was severed.
Since I had no business with the demon, I could just kill it immediately.
In my hand was a short dagger made of gleaming white silver.
The abruptly decapitated nameless demon blocked the magical energy bursting from its severed neck with its hand, horrified.
[K-kuk...! How... can a human...!]
"Why are you so clueless? I told you to go back. No one here called you."
-Puk pukpukpuk
I grabbed the horn of the demon, which was clutching its neck, and stabbed wildly at its body with the pure silver dagger.
It felt like plunging a knife into a sandbag.
These types were common.
Because demons were otherworldly entities and didn't suffer harm from this world's normal methods, a fair number of individuals were careless.
But if you knew the methods to inflict wounds like this, you could handle them well enough.
It seemed a low-ranking demon, hastily summoned and without any real name to speak of, had been called forth.
The demon was hacked to pieces without any resistance before losing its physical form and dispersing as black smoke.
"Trash that dies to a weapon made of silver, acting all high and mighty."
Some nameless low-class demon throwing its weight around like that.
High-ranking demons couldn't be properly damaged unless you used materials graded as rare metals.
I had felled the demon, killed all the zealots of the Demon Church. Now I just had to sneak back into the dormitory, shower, and wash my clothes stained with filthy blood.
With this, there would be no incident of demon-touched appearing during the dungeon exploration practical.
"Hm...?"
Someone was there.
Someone was creeping quietly this way.
Was it a remnant I hadn't dealt with yet?
Or perhaps it was someone related to the academy...?
Curious about who it was, I had been waiting silently when, without warning, I felt killing intent.
-Tang tatang!!
'... A gunshot?'
Piercing through the thick magical energy, the thunderous sound of gunfire echoed through the cave.
I was too slow to dodge in time, so I deflected the bullets flying at me with my sword. The moment they made contact, I got a clear look at them.
'They aren't ordinary bullets. They're silver bullets... made for anti-demon use!'
I could see the pure white silver and the words of God minutely engraved on their surfaces.
These weren't easy bullets to obtain.
The idea of throwing away the precious metal silver as a disposable item was horrific enough, but they also required separate craftsmanship on the bullets themselves.
On top of that, there weren't many people in this world who carried around a weapon as rare as a gun.
To me, this could only signify one thing.
'Hayden has finally revealed himself?'
The Academy's Devil Slayer, who I'd thought had vanished, had revealed himself.