Self-Sacrifice
I should have seen it coming the moment the demonkin split in two.
“Haaah—!”
That ordinary methods would never be enough to kill the thing.
Thud—!
An armor-piercing round from my pistol sheared through one of the demonkin’s tentacles. But hundreds more already dominated the surroundings. Losing a few made no difference at all.
“Just hold on a little longer!”
“Ugh...”
I propped Yekaterina up and called for Darwin. She was fighting desperately against demonkin twice her size, driving sharp spines into their hearts and secreting digestive fluid to crush them so they could no longer divide. At the same time she used the fission ability she had absorbed from them, steadily producing copies of herself. Absorb organic matter, divide, pierce the heart—over and over. Before long the ground around Darwin was littered with the half-digested remains of demonkin.
Even so, the sheer difference in numbers could not be overcome.
We just didn’t have enough time.
Darwin’s nature—absorbing genes and turning them into evolution—meant she held the potential to reach the absolute peak. But right now, with fewer than ten kinds of genes absorbed, her limits were everywhere. If I had used my capital to feed her the genes of rare creatures and magical beasts first, the story would have been different.
While Seo-hyun searched for a way to survive, Yekaterina watched her with a strange look in her eyes.
Why is she going this far for me?
A girl she had met only today. Sixteen, was it? Far too young to be tangled in the schemes and political games of the hero world. And yet the child had claimed to be Lucifer. The odds that she truly was Lucifer were high. The bloodstone she carried, comparable in size to Yekaterina’s own, was something Yekaterina had never once given to anyone but Lucifer in her entire life.
I always pictured a bearded middle-aged man...
Wait. She had formed her cooperative relationship with Lucifer ten years ago. That would mean this girl had been active on the dark web since she was five or six.
Impossible. There’s no way.
Was there some special circumstance? Early maturity? A once-in-a-century genius? Whatever the case, it was certain that she and Lucifer were connected in some way.
“You...”
“?”
“Is there something you want from me? You don’t have to help me this much.”
Yekaterina asked the question. Seo-hyun hesitated a moment, then offered a suitable answer.
“...You invested a lot in Project Darwin, and you came all this way to help. I’m grateful, so I’m protecting you.”
“...”
Yekaterina considered whether the words made sense.
I invested in Project Darwin because I wanted a usable combat force...
Coming all the way to Korea had been for the same reason—demonkin corpses sold for a fortune on the black market. Falling into the demonkin’s trap and ending up like this was an unfortunate side effect. Lucifer, with all the achievements she had piled up, would already know every one of those facts. The words she had just spoken were clearly meant to spare Yekaterina’s pride.
Ordinary people would have scrambled to save only their own lives when death was this close...
She had met thousands of such people, and more than a few times their selfishness had gotten her killed. But this child was different. She was trying to save Yekaterina with the attitude that her own death did not matter.
If Yekaterina herself had not possessed the power of reincarnation, could she ever have saved others with that same calm indifference?
“...”
Yekaterina injected some of her own blood into Seo-hyun. She normally preferred not to use her blood outside of her unique ability, but she had nothing else left to give. Still, because it carried the influence of that ability, the blood held a special vitality far beyond any ordinary drug.
Seo-hyun’s eyes widened as her stamina began recovering at high speed. Simply supporting Yekaterina had drained nearly all her strength, yet now she felt as if she had returned to the physical condition of her days in the National Intelligence Service.
“I helped a little.”
Yekaterina said it and turned her head away.
“...Hoo.”
I set Yekaterina down on the ground.
“Eh?”
“Wait here just a moment.”
The bloodstone’s power had recovered somewhat. Perhaps because its original owner was nearby, the recovery felt faster than usual. I bit a wound into the thumb of my left hand and drew out the blood inside my body. One of the demonkin saw it and charged at me with terrifying speed.
If this were still my original body, it wouldn’t have responded no matter what I wanted. But not now.
Even reduced and split into dozens of smaller forms, a demonkin was still a demonkin. Each one possessed the strength of a B-class magical beast. Only veterans who had spent long years on the battlefield among heroes would find them easy to handle. But buying time? That much I could manage.
Blood from the wound on my left hand shaped itself into a sharp awl. At the same time I dove beneath the demonkin where the tentacles were sparsest. A few of them noticed my approach late and lashed out, but I severed the incoming tentacles with the pistol in my right hand, then clenched the blood awl tight.
Shunk—!
The blood awl punched deep into the demonkin’s flesh. While it was distracted by the pain, Darwin harvested its life.
One more down.
What now? Was steadily reducing their numbers the right answer? If I trusted Darwin’s growth rate and dragged the fight into a war of attrition...
While my head was drowning in thoughts, the demonkin’s movements suddenly changed. Countless tentacles erupted from their bodies—enough to blot out the world—and instead of targeting Darwin or me, they turned toward the people lying on the ground.
They’re going after the wounded first...!
Attacks that had been flying at Darwin only moments ago switched targets. Watching the tentacles streak toward Yekaterina, my mind filled with a single word: disaster.
“Damn it...!”
Yekaterina forced a blood scythe into existence, but she was too slow. Facing certain death, resignation began to settle in her eyes. I, however, had no intention of letting her die.
Crack—!
“Wh-what...?”
A tentacle punched through my left hand, and red blood poured out. Whether the tentacle was coated in poison or not, a searing pain burned through me.
“Wh-why would you...?”
Yekaterina’s eyes flew wide, as if she had never imagined I would take the blow for her. Even I could not fully explain why I had gone that far.
“Hngh...!”
Bang—!
The last armor-piercing round left the pistol and slammed into the tentacle still piercing my hand. That had been my final bullet. Plenty of demonkin were still closing in, and not a single one of them was something I could defeat. Darwin strained with everything she had to reach my side, but the demonkin’s resistance was fierce. With so few genes absorbed, simply protecting her own body was already more than she could handle.
Then a storm of tentacles came flying. The first few I managed to dodge or bat away with pure reflex, but no human body could evade attacks that far exceeded the speed of sound forever. Tentacles punched through my heart, abdomen, diaphragm—every vital point. The deliberate killing blows drained away the stamina I had only just recovered.
“Kh...!”
I collapsed where I stood. Blood poured from my mouth; my lungs must have been torn.
“You...!”
Yekaterina rushed over and pressed her hands to the wounds.
“Your injuries...!”
Blood streamed from every part of my body. There was not a single unharmed place left; the fact that I was still alive was a miracle. She could have collapsed from blood loss at any second, yet Yekaterina kept pressure on the wounds.
“You...! Why would you go this far...!”
She spent more of her own blood to raise a defensive barrier of blood around us. It looked as if it might last a minute at best, but because it was made from her blood, its defensive power was trustworthy.
“It’s no use... I’ve already lost too much blood...”
“I can save you! So just stay still!”
I stopped her from trying to pour more blood from her fingertips. Her complexion was already as bad as it could get; using her unique ability any further was impossible.
“Use that to escape from here.”
“...”
Darwin had absorbed cockroach genes and, with them, the genes for wings. My bloodstone’s power was not enough to get out of this place, but Yekaterina could climb free without trouble.
Yekaterina bit her lip hard.
Why... why are you so devoted to someone else?
She thought of the countless people who had passed through her life. Among them had been great khans who ruled the world, knights who had defied nations with nothing but their own strength, even figures revered as saints. Not one of them had ever been willing to throw away their own life to save another.
“Lucifer...”
“Please call me Seo-hyun. That’s my name.”
“I... I will definitely save you.”
Yekaterina knocked Seo-hyun unconscious, then opened her own heart.
The blood that pools inside my heart holds an especially powerful force. Only once, but it can even bring the dead back to life.
She herself would simply come back if she died. She could not die even if she wanted to. That had been both her curse and her destiny from the moment she first entered this world. Only a few hundred years ago she had wandered the earth cursing the heavens, yearning for eternal rest. Now the fact that she would rise again felt like the greatest fortune of all. When she returned, she would be able to learn what had become of the benefactor who had tried so hard to save her.
“Haa...”
From within her heart she drew out a single drop of black blood that glowed with an ominous light. Creating even one drop required tens of thousands of liters of ordinary blood; she almost never brought it out.
“Please...”
She melted the black blood into Seo-hyun’s heart. At the same instant a crushing wave of exhaustion crashed over her. At first she thought that was all it was.
“Huh...?”
“I told you... use it for yourself...”
Lucifer—no, Seo-hyun—took Yekaterina’s arm as she transferred the black blood and pressed it firmly back against Yekaterina’s own heart.
“You weren’t unconscious...?”
Those were the last words Yekaterina managed before she lost consciousness. At the same time her body began recovering at high speed. A black curtain no one could breach rose around her; even the demonkin looked incapable of piercing it. It seemed the structure would allow no outside interference until her wounds had fully healed.
“Sorry, but... I hate being in anyone’s debt more than anything...”
The moment the words left my mouth, the blood barrier Yekaterina had raised collapsed. The demonkin that had been waiting for exactly that drove a tentacle straight through my heart.
I guess I’ve done enough...
It was a shame I never got to flip off the goddess, but whatever. The last ten years had been fun. Still... if I could keep living...
That was the last thought I had before I blacked out.
And then Darwin began to move.