Chapter 267: Old Testament — Beelzebute Grimoire (9)
It was pandemonium incarnate.
"Agh... aaagh...!"
"My arm—my arm...!"
A tableau of hell, worthy of the name, unfolding inside hell itself. A scene of carnage, with screams pouring in from every side.
At its center stood a giant of grotesque form. Its legs bent in directions no leg should bend, and its arms, far longer still, dragged along the ground. Where a head ought to have been, a hideous mass of meat hung instead, and countless eyeballs squirmed across the whole of its body.
Draw near, and the skin rotted first. Look upon it, and the eyes began to melt. Perceive it, comprehend it, and the brain itself came slowly undone.
Demon or holy knight, it made no distinction. The only things still holding anything like a line were bodies already rotting where they stood.
"That's... Baalzebul..."
One holy knight had muttered the name without thinking. For the sin of taking it upon his tongue at far too close a range, the tongue tore free and struck the ground with a wet slap.
"The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up..."
"O Lord, I am wasted away; be gracious unto me. O Lord, my bones tremble; heal me...!"
They prayed to be shielded and made whole. They prayed, and they prayed again, and holy power wound itself around their own flesh and the flesh of their comrades.
But it was a stopgap at best. No—not even first aid. Nothing more than stalling for time. The body still decayed faster than it could be restored.
And supernatural rot was not the only thing tormenting them. Maggots crawled from the places where the meat had already spoiled, and even living flesh that had not yet begun to rot was set upon by swarms of flies gathered thick enough to blacken the sky, latching on and gnawing.
"You goddamn bugs...!"
"Idiot! Don't open your mouth...! They'll crawl into your guts!"
A figure walked in the wake of the repulsive giant. Its limbs were shaped like a man's, but its head was that of an enormous fly, and the monster clapped its dry hands, well pleased.
Beelzebub. That he was the source of the swarm could be told from the shape of his face alone.
But no one could close the distance. To approach him was to draw nearer to Baalzebul as well, and that meant only one thing: death, hastened.
It could no longer hold together as a battle. Already it had become a wretched retreat—a massacre, far too one-sided.
A thick iron chain moved like a serpent, coiling the giant's legs and tearing his balance out from under him. Until that moment, the one-sidedness of it had been beyond all doubt.
Baalzebul staggered and pitched flat onto the ground. From the ears of those unfortunate enough to hear that scream, a yellowish pus began to seep.
"Hey, pal. Looks like you're gonna have to learn how to walk all over again."
The man gripping the end of the chain around the giant's ankle, however, was perfectly unharmed. He was so buried in fur that it might have been fairer to call him a male of the species than a man.
Apostle Jude Thaddaeus, a giant wolf walking on two legs, grinned a sly grin and jingled the chain in his hand.
His maw was a vivid scarlet. Not because he had torn out someone's throat the way a wolf would, but simply because it was his own blood, heaved up out of his own throat.
Being Jude Thaddaeus—being Moritz Hoffman—did not make him immune to the authority of that pair of flies. But the contest between holy power and rot leaned only a little toward the latter, and once his innately freakish regeneration was laid on the scale, it became a level he could endure well enough.
That was why Hoffman could still stand comparatively intact amid the pandemonium. Nearly the only being in this place capable of meeting Baalzebul head-on, and he had planted himself squarely in the giant's path.
"So you've finally come."
And yet even then, Beelzebub cracked his jaw wide and laughed. Hoffman standing here meant the assault of the Armata Strigoi had ceased. It meant they no longer had to trouble themselves over the time limit that had been hounding them all this while.
Of course, the greatest reason lay somewhere else entirely.
Baalzebul threw that maw wide and drove his head into the ground. Then he severed the ankle bound in the chain with his own strength, and set off running upon what had once been his maw.
Squelch, squelch—or thud, thud. Making footfalls of that sort, Baalzebul charged Hoffman.
But the attack never reached him. A boom came, as if it would shake heaven and earth, and Baalzebul's body was hurled far backward.
A host of flies shaped themselves into an enormous hand, caught the giant as he flew, and settled him upon the ground once more. Something like half of that vast body had vanished. It knit itself back together almost at once, and yet...
"Yes. Elena's Holy Nail."
He was not speaking of the famous holy relic used to nail Jesus to the cross.
It was one of the weapons the Church itself had forged—a weapon of last resort, brought out only when the personnel on hand could not possibly bring a situation under control, and when not even the support of the Apostles and the other powers could be hoped for. A special round, driven to its extreme by deaths offered up as sacrifice: dozens at the least, thousands at the most. That was Elena's Holy Nail.
...And a thing like that was being fired in rapid succession.
That could mean only one thing. Either a great war was underway, grave enough to put the very survival of the Church at risk...
"I thought you would come. Margarita."
...or an alchemist capable of reducing the cost of this atrocious weapon to zero was present on the field.
The distance was too great for the eye to see, but Beelzebub traced the trajectories of the rounds back to their source and turned his gaze that way. The other side seemed to know this place was a trap. That was why they were content to offer supporting fire from the rear, rather than bother stepping onto the line themselves.
Unlike Jude Thaddaeus, Bartholomew was human flesh. In this space of death, where meat rotted from the mere act of drawing breath, she would not be able to fight as she usually did.
"Baalzebul. Raise your output further. Quicken the rot."
And yet, the moment they abandoned the original plan and came this far, they had already proved the hostage play effective. A corpse rots faster than a living thing; obvious, and Beelzebute's authority was no exception. The bodies of the dead would decay even faster than they were decaying now, and in the end they would become Beelzebub's thralls.
There were only two ways to stop it.
One was to bring them down before the other holy knights died. But Baalzebul was a monster who would take offense at being called second in sheer endurance, and this fight could not help but run long.
So only the remaining option was possible. Han Seoyeon, resurrecting the dead in the very instant they died.
She would have no choice but to come at least within reach of the miracle. And that meant setting foot upon this rotting earth.
In the end, she would have to come. Both sides, most likely, already knew it.
"The drone has been destroyed. Please deploy the fourth."
"Ah—yes. Understood...!"
The screen had gone pitch-black. Han Seoyeon clicked her tongue at an authority that corroded even machines, and in the meantime the channel changed and the battlefield began to show itself again.
A gun of strange design was mounted in the position she had taken. She let out a breath and laid her hand on the trigger.
Pull the trigger, and a sacrifice died, and lived again. The round struck home, the giant was crushed, and regenerated. All the while, holy knights were dying here and there across the field. Some had already drawn their last breath and become puppets of the Lord of the Flies.
"......"
Without meaning to, Seoyeon ground her teeth.
Because of her. For no reason but to draw her out, innumerable people were marching toward death. Every time she watched someone else's flesh rot on her account, the urge to throw herself onto the front line rose up at once.
Better to go and die herself than leave so many to die. No—going did not mean she would certainly die. It only meant leaping into a somewhat unfavorable fight. There was every chance she would live. So even now, this very moment...
"...Haa."
Han Seoyeon let out another long breath.
By rights, charging in was the correct choice. Rationally and emotionally alike.
"Seoyeon. Do you believe in them?"
And yet the only reason she could hold this ground so firmly was what she had been told by the Pope.
"Do you believe in their conviction, their obstinacy, and their madness? Do you believe they will be there without fail? Beyond the first plan—putting the enemy down before a massacre can break out—and the second, in which you stake your life and set foot on that land of death, do you believe in a will steadfast enough to truly make possible a third plan one can scarcely even dare to conceive?"
"...Yes. I believe."
Watching the battlefield beyond the screen, Han Seoyeon Margarita swallowed.
The third plan for breaking this situation: pull the holy knights clear of the rot's reach before death could claim them.
Of course, it ought to have been impossible. That place was a killing ground where even the flesh of those who came to rescue others rotted away. No human being would have the resolve to go after them, nor the ability. There was a thread of a chance some heroic soul might appear, but even then it would be a bare handful, nowhere near enough to save so many.
...By common sense, that was how it stood.
And then the battlefield on the screen changed utterly.
The holy knights trying to get clear of the monster had looked like nothing so much as a flowing river. At a certain moment, that river began to run backward. They drove their rotting limbs on—closer to Baalzebul, closer to death.
On the arm of every one of those swimming against the current, a black armband was tied. A black armband bearing neither emblem nor letter. On a battlefield, at least, only one organization was symbolized by such a thing.
The Triage Team. An international armed medical support company.
Aspiring suicides, their utilitarianism twisted to a grotesque extreme of self-sacrifice—people for whom saving some five lives and dying themselves counted as a handsome profit. There was no world in which they failed to appear where war and death ran rampant. Even the commonplace truth, that the living cannot enter hell by any ordinary means, lost all meaning in front of them.
The Pope had believed in their madness, and Han Seoyeon had believed in their conviction. That they would see to it no corpse she might have to resurrect ever came into being in the first place. If it was Triage, then it would be so. It had to be.
Even so, she had not been without a thread of unease, and only after she confirmed their intervention with her own two eyes could Han Seoyeon let out a sigh of relief.
She set her hand on the trigger again. Now, at last, she could fight with her mind at ease.
That sigh had been one of certainty in victory, too. It no longer mattered how much time they spent. In a war of attrition the larger side held every advantage, and the Church was a vaster organization than any other in the hidden world.