Subjugation of the Jack-o'-Lantern (2)
The angel, Lucia.
White wings and a halo above her head — the classic image that came to mind whenever anyone imagined an angel.
Her precise designation was the White Wing Race, a species distinguished by both striking beauty and combat aptitude.
Setting aside her natural good looks, when it came to raw fighting ability she was the salutatorian of the entire Combat Department — no small feat in itself.
It was said half in jest, but she sat at the very top of the first-year hierarchy known as the Three Heavens and Five Emperors.
On top of that, she wielded not only martial arts but also basic magic and holy arts.
A truly all-around prodigy.
Even counting my past life, I'd only crossed paths with her a handful of times, but her fame had reached my ears plenty well enough.
The War God, Lucia.
The rumor that a nestless angel had gone berserk across the battlefields was one no survivor of that era could have failed to hear.
And that woman was now standing right in front of me.
She hadn't lost her smile yet, gazing at me with her hand outstretched.
"What's the matter? Not going to take my hand?"
Lucia said it teasingly, fluttering the pure-white wings at her back.
Her timing was perfect — as if she'd been quietly watching the crisis unfold and simply waiting for her moment.
They say that if you live honestly, good fortune will come find you eventually. Was this that moment?
Suddenly filled with a renewed zest for life, I clasped her outstretched hand without hesitation.
In my past life, I never would have gotten to meet her like this.
Having finally risen to stand on equal footing with her, I introduced myself, stiff and gruff as it came out.
"Choi Gangjun."
"Already knew that."
The angel said with a knowing smile.
"Someone told me all about you already."
Saying that, Lucia gave a casual shrug of her shoulders.
Who else could it be, given that she was on friendly terms with the White Wing Race?
A person closer to the heavens than anyone I knew abruptly came to mind.
The one who received heavenly revelations when the Upper Climb Tournament was held. If she was my master, it wouldn't be the least bit surprising that she had connections with angels.
Why she introduced me, or why this girl is even here, I have no idea, but...
Apparently she intended to collect the full price for the money she'd lent me — and thanks to that, I was still alive. My future debt burden had grown a little heavier, but that was a problem for later.
What mattered was right now.
An absolutely superb reinforcement had arrived — a top-of-the-line jet booster that could actually fly through the sky. All I had to do was be grateful.
So despite being, for all practical purposes, meeting her for the first time, I fully intended to shamelessly ask her to lend me her wings — to let me ride on her back.
My body and energy had both recovered to a serviceable degree, and every second counted.
───Krrruaaaaaaagh!
At least, that had been the plan — until a bizarre howl echoed down from the upper reaches of the distant tower.
A wail of anguish? A cursed scream of the vengeful dead? An eerie, incomprehensible cry.
But it didn't stop at being a mere echo.
......Grind. Grind. Grind.
All at once, hands of rotting flesh and bleached bone — the hands of the dead — burst up out of the floor.
Their numbers were few, but the problem was that they weren't the only things that had started moving.
Skreek— skreek— Tin-can robots displayed in a toy shop began to creak and shudder into motion as if suddenly plugged into a wall socket.
So did the monster masks in the clothing store, the magitech suits, and a cat mask that was nothing but a hollow head.
Grrrind— grind—!
The merchandise of the Witchcraft Quarter began moving of its own accord, soaked in pitch-black mana.
Perhaps reflecting their owners' eccentric tastes, they let out strange noises from who-knows-where and came lunging at us.
"──Kyaeeeeek!"
There was no time to waste on such trash. I stepped forward and addressed the angel.
"I'll buy you time, so hurry up and get ready for the leap."
"Ohh?"
Lucia made a knowing, meaningful face, as if asking how I'd figured it out.
It didn't last long, though.
The angel soon closed her eyes and began her incantation.
"──Father who art in heaven, watch over these frail wings of mine."
The angel Lucia.
Among the White Wing Race — rare in number but each individual exceptionally gifted — she was a being apart.
One who could occupy any place, yet belong to nowhere at all.
Quite simply, an angel who had received the divine mandate of 'Freedom.'
That fraudulently overpowered ability could leap across dimensions themselves.
Never mind something as trivial as space.
Well, it does take a little while to cast.
That much, I was more than willing to overlook.
"Die!"
"Kyaeeeeek!"
BOOM—! I smashed the shrieking piano that came charging at us with a single blow, then tore the head off a dinosaur mask that lunged at me with a similar screech.
I had no idea how they worked, but the moment I ripped its head off, the dinosaur suit collapsed face-first to the ground.
That's right — no head to think with, and you die. Just like me.
But the situation was nothing to be optimistic about.
The light, nimble things — robots, masks, costumes — came flying at us easily enough, but after that, the heavyweights began closing in.
KU-BOOM! KU-BOOM!
A commercial building, striding toward us one lumbering step at a time as if it had sprouted legs.
And it wasn't alone — every building on the street was trailing after it.
BOOM— BOOM— BOOM— BOOM—!
The entire street of the Witchcraft Quarter was bearing down on us.
"This is such bullshit."
I wouldn't die to those things, but dealing with them one by one was an unthinkable waste of time.
Better to weave and dodge, break through with my body, or rely on the jet booster — even if it took a little acrobatics.
Right. I have the jet booster.
Brand new, top-of-the-line, no less.
"All set."
How long had I been holding them off?
At last, the angel had finished her preparations for the leap.
I turned my head to find her enveloped in radiant light, great wings spread wide.
Holy, sacred energy — the very antithesis of demons.
KU-BOOM! KU-BOOM!
As the entire Witchcraft Quarter street came charging at us like something possessed, I grasped her hand. Lucia smiled brightly.
"That's it — hold on tight."
Please do be careful not to go flying off halfway through. Murmuring that, she brought the incantation to its close.
"──O light, guide us."
And so, we leaped through space.
Mana is, in itself, an attack.
However, since the expenditure of mana made it inefficient, refined methods of channeling it were developed — magic, and witchcraft.
But this scream paid no heed whatsoever to such concerns of efficiency.
───Krrruaaaaaaagh!
The colossal storm of mana blasting toward her sent Cheon Yuha staggering backward in an instant.
Then she furrowed her brow. She had never once been overwhelmed like this — not even by a master of sound-based qi attacks.
"......Ha. I must not let my guard down."
So she'd been caught by such a petty trick yet again.
Forcing out a strained breath, she suppressed the bile rising in her chest.
She wiped the blood trickling from her muffled, ringing ears and squared her stance once more.
Fwoooosh─!
She watched the pitch-black ghost fire rising from the seven holes of the pumpkin head.
She would observe the demon soaked in black mana, preparing herself against any attack it might unleash.
"Let's fall back for now."
"What?"
That was what she would have done, had it not been for Elenor Andersen.
Cheon Yuha kept her eyes fixed on the sorcerer as she spoke, her mouth twisting in reluctant concession.
"......No, setting aside avenging Gangjun, if we leave it be, that thing only grows stronger, does it not?"
Crack— crunch—! Even now, the rift in the air was widening by the moment.
Elenor Andersen saw it all too clearly as well — and she was, if anything, grasping far more of the truth than Cheon Yuha was.
......Yuha's right. Its power is growing by the second.
She was no angel of the White Wing Race, but as an elf, Elenor possessed an exceptional gift for detecting the black mana — the demonic aura — of demons and black mages alike.
And yet Elenor could not fathom where the limits of the power churning inside that demon ended.
The only thing she knew for certain was that it possessed a quality and quantity on an entirely different plane from any ordinary black mage's.
......It's already fully mutated.
Just as the system message had said, the demon before them had ascended to a rank beyond any mortal's ability to handle.
Though it seemed it hadn't fully regained its senses yet, so soon after completing its mutation.
Escaping before that demon reclaimed its true intellect was the optimal choice──
Elenor Andersen fought to keep her composure as she tried to explain it to the others.
That they should vanish from the creature's sight, and that it was they who needed to buy time.
That cornering it would require nothing less than an angel — one of those beings called demon hunters.
But at that very moment, Parkinson — who had been spewing uncontrolled black mana — abruptly stopped moving.
Grrrind—!
From the pumpkin head — dead center of what would have been a human forehead — a jet-black horn erupted.
A defining trait of the higher-rank demons.
Seeing it, Elenor could only let out a sigh of despair.
"......Ah."
The dungeon's information has been updated.
The Jack-o'-Lantern's Demon King's Castle
Danger Grade: SS
The demon has ascended to the rank of 'King.' Slay the fully mutated demon without delay.
With every passing moment, the demon grows stronger.
With every passing moment, the domain of evil expands.
With every passing moment, the world is destroyed.
It was already too late.
Mutation sure as hell didn't waste any time, did it.
The elf cursed her past self for not spitting out her words faster — and at the same time, she murmured the invocation.
"───Sylphid!"
The wind spirit swept beneath Cheon Yuha and Elenor, their bodies turning feather-light in its currents.
Only then did Elenor speak in a hurried voice.
"Yuha! We can fight it later, after we regroup with the secret weapon!"
"......Ugh."
With that said, Cheon Yuha had no choice but to weigh retreat. No — she knew she had to.
Hanging on this decision was not merely her own life, but the lives of everyone here.
I must cast aside my stubbornness.
Having murmured that to herself, she steeled her heart and resolved to withdraw.
She would regroup with Choi Gangjun, who had been flung somewhere beyond the tower, and face the demon anew.
— Or so she thought, beginning her tactical retreat, when Cheon Yuha froze mid-motion.
What is that?
She caught a flash of light in the hole through which Choi Gangjun had been launched. She narrowed her eyes, and within moments she made out what it was — and shouted, her face drained of color.
"Elenor! Get down!"
The elf had spotted it at nearly the same instant. With a strangled "Wha—!" she screamed and threw herself rolling across the ground. Cheon Yuha, shrouded in protective qi, rolled after her.
SHOOOM─!
The lance of light that passed between them streaked on until it reached the professor who had so recently finished his demonification.
Professor Parkinson, reborn — the pumpkin-headed demon, the Jack-o'-Lantern — had wondered what the radiance was the instant his eyes opened.
......Huh?
A lance of light — the sworn nemesis of demons. No — it was Lucia and Choi Gangjun, wrapped in glory. The man swung a fist sheathed in light.
"One hit, for starters."
And then judgment landed upon the demon's chest.
"Guooooooaaaargh!"
For the first time, the demon felt pain.