Old Testament: The Beelzebute Grimoire (8)

The white vestments were permitted to only one man among all the living clergy. He drew his hand across the great map spread over the table as he said it.

"The Six Precepts of Cassandra? Why bring those up all of a sudden?"

The woman standing close beside him, as if in attendance, asked it back. Woman she might have been, but her face was as young as a middle schooler's.

"Yes. Cassandra's First Precept. The first principle for facing a prophet."

If the opponent was a prophet, you fielded a prophet greater than they were—or simply more of them. It was the simplest method, and the surest, and that was why it stood as the first principle. But the precept could not be kept in every hour and every place. If the enemy's prophetic power outstripped every prophet you could muster, the principle did not hold.

"And that is precisely our case."

"No. I am not trying to blame Abraham. I am only saying that the enemy's circumstances are what they are."

A voice that seemed to grieve its own inadequacy drifted from the speaker built into the laptop. The Pope met it with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a faint smile, as if to comfort him.

"Well then, Michael. What ought we to do with a situation like this?"

"We'd... have to apply a different precept, wouldn't we?"

"Precisely."

The Third Precept. Let them be struck even as they see it. Let them be struck because they saw it.

"And so the heart of the strategy is Seoyeon and Moritz's Armata Strigoi. At the very least, the enemy has no means of stopping her head-on in a localized battle."

In other words, she was a time limit by her mere existence. The war would be won or lost on whether every fight could be finished before Han Seoyeon swept the field and smashed the enemy to pieces.

"Which is why they are the ones growing desperate, even though they are the side on defense."

And yet the enemy could not commit their full strength to a swift, decisive blow.

"They will believe Belial is still with us."

Satan, slain at regular intervals and sealed within the Holy See. Lucifer, run through by the Spear of Longinus and shut away. Beelzebute, split into four upon his resurrection. Leviathan, whose very whereabouts had been unknown for decades. Of the five once called the pinnacle of demonkind, only Belial still preserved so much as a body in the present age. He too was weakened beside his prime, and yet within the category of demon he remained a card close to the strongest. They could not pour every last soldier into a single place. The moment they showed a gap, Belial—waiting on his chance—might come crashing in.

"Of course, sooner or later they will realize Belial himself never took the field... but they could not have been certain of it yet. Which leaves them only one option."

A strike against the command. In short, the same decapitation this side had already attempted. Then, with the chain of command in chaos, draw Han Seoyeon onto unfavorable ground. Even she could not promise victory if the whole pack raided her at once.

"Yes. That is it. It was entirely something we could have foreseen. —Does that answer your question, Michael? How we knew beforehand, and prepared?"

The Pope smiled.

"I had you standing by in the command post for this very situation, Michael."

At his feet lay some dozens of demons, torn to ragged shreds and strewn across the floor.

"...No. That still doesn't explain it."

But Michael—Shishigai Setsuku—shook her head.

"If this had been an ordinary fight, they weren't opponents I could have held off alone. A straight fight, and I'd have won easily. But they'd already gotten inside the command post. There was no guarantee I could protect Your Holiness from there."

They had been sent to assault the Pope precisely because they were strong of that order. It was only natural. She had not cut them off before they closed in, and fighting one against many inside the command post while keeping him alive would have been too much to ask—unless he had already passed Setsuku intelligence on every demon in the strike and laid a perfect counter in advance. And that, of course, was impossible without foreknowledge of the assault itself.

"How did you know? Prophecy, after all?"

"No. In foresight and insight, the other side is ahead of us. Had we read the future and moved to meet it, the enemy would have read that response in advance and changed the makeup of the strike team."

"Then how..."

"For now, let us leave it at this. The Holy Spirit whispered it to me."

The Pope only smiled, and did not answer the question.

"First, let us finish putting things in order. ...I say that, but from here on there is nothing left but to believe."

"Believe? In the Lord?"

"No. If I must name it—the faith and the conviction of our comrades."

Another riddle in place of an answer, and Setsuku's brow tightened.

"Fate or prophecy, it makes no difference... It is simply the trust that, in this situation, they will act in exactly this way. The archdemon Bael is a superb strategist, and a prophet. And that is precisely why he is weak against an attack that begins from outside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the chessboard."

The Pope added the words when he saw her face. It was still not an explanation that helped very much.

"That one's gonna fail."

"...Hm?"

A voice already half dead muttered it.

The remark came out of nowhere. Even so, something in it must have caught his interest, for Bael halted the step he had been about to take away. He turned back and stood over the lump of meat twitching in a pool of blood.

"Going to fail, you say. Which do you mean—the assault on the Pope, or the killing of Margarita?"

At a glance, it looked as though her words had soured his mood. In truth, the response was not one swept along by feeling. Was there some factor he had not yet accounted for? Was that factor truly capable of disrupting the operation? He only feigned displeasure, angling to draw the information out on the sly. The fewer variables, the better.

"Cough... Hard to say. Honestly, I hadn't thought it through that far..."

"...Is that so."

...So it was only something she spat out of sheer stubbornness.

Disappointment and relief arrived in Bael at the same moment. There had been no real grounds for his plan to fail—only bluster, or a curse. He was just settling on that conclusion.

"But you're a dumbass who'd look right at me and still run your mouth about how it failed. So the other ops are gonna fail too. That's what I figured."

"I fail to understand. In what way is that miserable state of yours a success?"

Bael snorted. Did she still have the leisure to bluff? Or had she taken such a blow to the head that she still believed there was hope?

"Limbs severed, crawling the floor like a worm. I cannot fathom what you imagine you can still do."

"Getting here was the success, frog-head."

"As I have already told you, if it is a suicide attack, there are any number of ways to contain it. You dim-witted little bloodsucker."

"Yeah. That."

The lump of meat—Rachel Evans—grinned through the blood caked over her.

"Suicide? ...And what ingenious new method of killing yourself have you dreamed up, to talk that way? It isn't even amusing anymore."

"Not that."

Ptui. She spent what strength she had left spitting out the blood pooled in her mouth, then went on.

"Dim-witted... I don't love that part. But yeah. The 'vampire' bit."

"You are no True Ancestor. So far as I am aware, you are nothing but a blood-kin with an obstinately long life."

An unremarkable vampire—the sort whose arms and legs neither shot back into being nor flew home of their own accord to stick themselves on again. That was what Rachel Evans was. Her own skill was exceptional, but reduced to a state like this, even that meant nothing. And still, Evans was smiling.

"So what if I'm nothing much. What matters is that a vampire is here."

From the very beginning, reaching this place had been the only objective. She added it with a proud smile, then looked at the arm that had been cut away and now lay rolling on the floor—at her own wristwatch, soaked in blood. It was about time. Evans forced her head up with everything she had and muttered.

"Let's die together, you fucking chimera bastard."

He had told her there were no end of ways to shut a suicide attack down. Was she still clinging to it? Bael's expression stayed lukewarm as he moved to pin her.

—And in that instant, the wall beside them blew apart and came down.

"What...?!"

Was she buying time?! No—but there shouldn't have been anyone who could come to rescue her...

He had accounted for everyone who had entered through the Hellgate the Church had thrown open. Among them, the positions of every monster capable of overturning this situation were already confirmed. A demon who had been dwelling in Hell from the start, then? Nothing short of Belial himself would be of any help here, and his foresight had already established that Belial would not arrive at this place in this moment.

Then who in the world?

The dust raised by the blast settled, and the intruder showed himself. Bael's face flooded with shock.

"James...?!"

A Malttugi mask, of the sort one might have worn back in the Joseon era. Clothes fouled with dust and blood hung in tatters. An assortment of firearms filled both hands.

Han Jihan. James. The Vampire Slayer, the Poison Frog, Tolmai—or Van Helsing. Master and adoptive father of the next Bartholomew.

"How did you get in?"

"There's a vampire here."

A cracked voice answered, without feeling. Even as he answered, he took one step forward. The leg was twisted in an unnatural direction, and he limped on it.

"I am asking how you came to Hell! You certainly did not use the passage the Church opened."

"Opened a door. Walked in."

"...The Hellgate. Yourself."

"Wasn't that what we were talking about?"

So how, exactly... He did not ask. It was not that the words failed Bael. He simply knew that this time, too, the answer would come back the same: ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠because there's a vampire here.

"Tch...! Dispose of him, Nisroc! Vampire Slayer or not, right now he is nothing but a diseased beast."

In place of an answer, he ordered Han Jihan subdued.

By the intelligence Bael possessed, both of Han Seoyeon's masters had taken wounds that would leave them unable even to govern their own bodies for some time. Whatever other demon he might have contracted besides his existing pact with Glasya-Labolas, it was plain he was only forcing the body to move. Even setting that aside—whether from damage taken on the way here or otherwise—he was a wreck from head to toe at a glance. The assault had been wholly unforeseen, but considered carefully, he was not so threatening an opponent.

"...Nisroc?"

When no answer came, Bael turned with a vacant stare. The subordinate who had been standing there only a moment before had already turned tail and run.

"That wretch... You lot! Subdue him, now!"

So swift was the desertion that Bael ground his teeth and snapped the order at his other subordinates—and in that span, Han Jihan tore his own shirt sleeve apart. His forearm came bare, drenched in blood. The geometric pattern carved into it showed itself, and with it a smartwatch in the shape of a wristwatch.

Every demon in the room recognized the pattern. They could not have failed to. It was a basic magic circle for summoning a demon.

At once a recorded human voice spilled from the device on his wrist. Set against the pattern on the forearm, anyone could see it was a rite for calling a demon.

"Hey, pile on! One demon, tops!"

"Out of the way! Tolmai's neck is mine!"

One demon at the very most—and a rite that could not call anything on Belial's scale, beyond all ordinary measure. Once they understood that, the demons turned triumphant and closed in around him. If not now, when would they ever get the chance to kill that Red Knight? Excitement and anticipation climbed to the crowns of their heads.

"......!"

Bael alone truly understood what it meant. Horror washed over his face.

"Wait?! Hold, you stupid human...! What do you mean to do, calling that into a place this cramped...! Do you mean to die along with the rest of us?!"

"Vampire."

Bael shouted, desperate—but Han Jihan only looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

"I kill the vampire."

"You mad bastard..."

KRA-KOOM!

A colossal beast, vast enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to fill the command chamber, crushed everything in its path and brought the building down from the inside.