Demonkin (2)
The Steel Knight.
That was the name of Isabella’s unique ability.
It allowed her to command any metal that existed in the world exactly as she willed.
Her innate power had been judged more than capable of reaching A-class, yet she had spent her entire life in service to the Wittelsbach family.
“...”
Everyone called it a pity.
Even belonging to the Wittelsbachs, they said, she could have built a reputation to rival the house itself if only she had tried.
But she had always chosen to remain a maid of the Wittelsbach family.
It was because of a promise made long ago, when she first met the previous head of the house.
You told me to protect your family… I’m certain of it.
She had nearly died at the age of seven, caught in a monster attack.
The one who saved her then had been the current head’s father—the previous patriarch.
It seems the time has come to keep that promise.
The knowledge that she could shield his descendants from a demonkin filled her with quiet satisfaction.
“Twist.”
Screeeech—!
With a shriek of grinding metal, the steel girders that held the building’s skeleton intact collapsed at once.
The tower beside the demonkin toppled onto the monster, and a colossal shockwave rolled outward across the surrounding streets.
“Haa… that should buy us some time.”
She hadn’t killed it, but she had bought precious seconds.
Judging by its type, the demonkin seemed vulnerable to external impact; she was certain she had at least restricted its movement.
She allowed herself a breath—only for the demonkin’s power to prove far greater than she had estimated.
It burst through the fallen rubble, eyes snapping open.
I can’t win.
The thought struck her in an instant.
Yet even if victory was impossible, protecting her masters remained the sacred duty of one who guarded the estate.
Isabella accelerated the bloodflow racing through her veins.
Oxygen flooded her starved muscles; movement returned in a rush. She layered a faint physical reinforcement over herself with mana.
It could never match a true body-enhancement ability, but even this was useful if handled correctly.
Whoosh—!
A tentacle lanced toward her.
The strike was almost too fast for the eye to follow. Reflexively she twisted a building into a foothold and launched herself into the air.
By warping steel beams that linked mansion to skyscraper, she forged temporary platforms and raced upward until she hung directly above the demonkin’s head.
From here I can inflict a fatal wound.
With one hand she seized every nearby rebar structure, drawing them together and sculpting a colossal spear of pure steel.
Ten meters long, half a meter thick—the sheer mass of the weapon made even the demonkin flinch.
Ordinarily she could never have wielded something so heavy.
Even now it should have been impossible.
But the one who would hurl this great spear was not Isabella herself—it was Newton, with his 9.8 m/s² of acceleration.
The massive lance began its fall from the sky and drove straight into the demonkin’s body.
Twenty tons of ultra-dense steel punched mercilessly through the tentacled mass.
And that was precisely why she froze in shock.
“The steel spear… went straight through…?”
Normally the weapon should have lodged in vital organs and delivered a killing blow. Instead it had simply passed through the demonkin’s body, leaving almost no damage at all.
In that same instant a tentacle whipped out of her blind spot.
Oh no—!
Too late.
Suspended in midair, she had nowhere to dodge.
She braced for the end—yet the tentacle racing toward her was severed halfway and veered wide of its mark.
“Isabella!”
“Lady Yulia? Why are you here…!”
Yulia’s wind slash had cut the tentacle clean through.
“First we get clear!”
“You can leave me behind—!”
“Leave you? How am I supposed to leave you? Move!”
Yulia seized Isabella and rode a path of wind.
Pride stung by the repeated destruction of its tentacles, the demonkin reshaped them into a gigantic hammer and brought it down to crush them both.
At that moment a shaped-charge shell streaked out of the empty air and slammed into the demonkin’s body.
Unlike ordinary lead rounds, the shaped charge punched cleanly through the creature’s armored hide. Unlike the steel spear, it lacked the energy to pass all the way through—yet it buried itself deep and tore open a bleeding wound.
“!”
Only then did the demonkin activate the hardening that granted near-perfect immunity to bombardment. By then the shell was already lodged beyond extraction.
Yulia used the opening to pull Isabella safely from the battlefield.
“Haa… we’re clear. But a shell out of nowhere? Did some unmanned turrets survive? Or was it the military?”
“...”
No one answered Yulia’s question.
Technically one person could have—but she had no spare breath for conversation.
—Status of the unmanned turrets still left in Seoul?
Of 2,054 units: 294 completely destroyed, 1,143 rendered combat-ineffective, 619 operating normally.
—How many of those turrets have the demonkin inside their effective range?
478 units.
—Retarget half of them onto the demonkin. Any word from Yekaterina?
She says she will depart immediately.
—Tell her to get here as fast as she can. What the hell is the military doing?
They are establishing a military cordon around the Seoul area…
—For real? They’re completely useless! Do they even know a demonkin showed up?
Heroes have been deployed to the Seoul region instead. Usa is also scheduled to arrive within one hour.
—One hour… Fine. We just have to hold until then.
This was the moment to reveal every hidden card I had kept in reserve.
“Ugh, these monsters just keep coming!”
“Because the demonkin is right here.”
I moved fast, putting a lead round through the eye of a beast that tried to leap on me, then used my unique ability to scramble its internal organs into pulp.
The others stared at how easily I dropped the monsters compared to everyone else, but they simply chalked it up to skill and let it go.
“By the way, Seo-hyun! Is the sunlight okay?”
“Ah… it’s not that strong, actually. Probably because the demonic energy is blocking a fair amount of the UV.”
Come to think of it, it had been ages since I last enjoyed this kind of intense outdoor exercise.
Ten years after reincarnating into this world, and this was the first time I was really pushing my body hard.
The demonkin’s movements are intensifying.
—Hold it somehow. We only need to buy time until reinforcements arrive.
Boom—!
Another high-explosive shell detonated against the demonkin’s face, scattering its attention once more.
Heroes should be showing up any second now…!
Even if Usa was still an hour out, nearby heroes like Unsa or other A-class fighters ought to have been able to reach us by now.
Just one or two A-class heroes would make containing the demonkin far easier.
Or they could at least scramble a few fighter jets.
Of course the sky was saturated with demonic energy, so even ordinary aircraft would struggle to fly.
I could only curse the fact that demonic energy fried every piece of electronic equipment it touched.
“Yulia! Fall back!”
“H-huh?”
The instant Yulia took a single step backward, a tentacle tore through the ground where she had stood.
The entire appendage was now sheathed in a hardened outer layer; ordinary physical attacks would barely scratch it.
What’s left in the arsenal?
The maids employed by the estate were formidable.
Most were former special-forces operators, expert with firearms, and several possessed unique abilities useful in combat.
Yulia herself could output power on par with a mid-tier hero, and Isabella in particular wielded force equal to an A-class hero.
Through Laplace I could commandeer every unmanned turret in the vicinity and seize control of other electronic systems as well.
The sky being choked with demonic energy made calling in unmanned bombers impossible, of course.
It was almost tragic that unmanned turrets existed while unmanned tanks still hadn’t been developed.
Setting collateral damage aside, a single tank was worth a national-treasure-class—C- to B-class—hero. If I could drag a quarter of the country’s armored forces here, we might actually stand a chance against a demonkin.
Then again, what country would ever think of facing a demonkin with tanks? Only a nation whose army had developed to absurd extremes—ours—could even attempt it.
America, China, and Russia all had vast territories; by the time their armor arrived, the demonkin and its monsters would already have fled.
“…Huh?”
In that moment I felt the monsters’ movements turn wrong.
Muscles on one side twisted or swelled unnaturally; in the blink of an eye the beasts warped into grotesque shapes.
At first I felt relief that they had grown sluggish—but as seconds ticked by that relief vanished, replaced by a cold dread that settled deep in my chest.
Moments later the monsters’ hides split open, and fragments shaped like the demonkin itself burst free.
“!”
“Kh—!”
Countless tentacles coiled around the people and prepared to thrash them to pieces—
When every tentacle binding them ruptured at once, and the figure who had been waiting stepped into view.