The Promised Land (2)
That Chris would run I had anticipated well enough — he still had plenty of holdouts from the days when men had backed his claim. That was exactly why I had laid a tracking spell in advance. What I had not anticipated was that a high-ranking demon would come all this way in person just to pull him out.
Why, though? If it were Mabel — who churns out Class-2 mana cores the way a farmer raises potatoes — I might see the point. But what possible use was Chris?
Granted, the boy had been hailed as a prodigy since before he could walk, and his talent was respectable enough in its own right.
But the moment he fell into the demons' hands, he forfeited every legitimate claim to his title. The demons would know that as well as I did. So why go to the trouble of extracting him?
That was the single biggest reason I was hunting him down. A premonition kept telling me I absolutely had to find out why the demons wanted Chris.
"Zagnak."
"Yes, O Great Human!"
"...Just call me Lord Iden."
"L-Lord Iden, you say? Do you truly mean it?!"
Zagnak's eyes bulged as though they meant to leap from his skull.
"You know of me?"
"Of course, my lord! How could this humble one possibly fail to know Lord Iden, the Butcher of Andrasi?"
Zagnak trembled like an aspen leaf. The Butcher, huh. I hadn't realized I'd picked up such a gruesome epithet. Then again, from the demons' standpoint, it was probably earned.
"Forgive this blind wretch for failing to recognize your magnificence! I'll do anything you command — only, please, anything but killing me!"
Zagnak flung himself flat against the ground.
"What lies out there, beyond?"
I pointed to the northwest of Stormrock as I asked. Still prone, Zagnak peered past the fog.
"Ah, there is ever so much out there, my lord. The Cursed Tower, the nesting grounds of a dragon... the Crimson Spore Marsh, and the City of the Undying, if memory serves. But I daresay it's the ruins of the old Lizardman Kingdom that would interest Lord Iden."
"The Promised Land, you mean?"
"You know your legends well, my lord! That's what the lizardfolk call it. Though these days it's nothing but a land cast aside."
As it happened, the trace of Chris I was following led to the vicinity of the Promised Land.
"Then guide me there."
"Just follow this humble one, my lord!"
Zagnak scrambled to his feet. The mana saturating northern Stormrock was so dense that working spells was no simple matter, so I exerted my divine power to push the miasma back. Only the power of a god could stand against the power of a god.
Kiiiiieek!
The monsters that surfaced now and then I dealt with through my spells. Every time one of them took a hit, Zagnak flinched as though the blow had landed on him.
For roughly two hours we pressed through the pale haze. From here on, pinning down Chris's presence would only get harder, which meant leaning less on spells and more on the tracking arts.
We had covered quite some distance when I spotted them: nine demons barring the road ahead. Armed with spears, swords, and whips, they stood shoulder to shoulder, masks wreathing their faces in bloody vapor. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone squander precious Doomsteel on masks instead of weapons or armor.
"...Those would be the Doom Reapers," Zagnak said, his voice rattling.
"Doom Reapers?"
"You don't know the Doom Reapers, my lord? The Executioners of Death! The Claws of the Demon! The personal guard of His Grace, Duke Ragnor!"
Their auras were certainly nothing to sneeze at. Any one of them had the makings of what men would call an absolute master.
"And if the Doom Reapers have come this far, it means His Grace Ragnor himself has graced somewhere nearby with his presence..."
Zagnak tilted his head.
"Hold on — why am I explaining all this, piece by piece, to a piece of human garbage?"
Huh?
"Hey! Over here!"
Zagnak sprinted toward the Doom Reapers, arms flapping like a windmill in a gale.
"Over here! It was I who captured Iden Esterji and brought him before you!"
...
Betrayal faster than light itself. Not that I'd ever trusted him for a second, so calling it betrayal was probably too generous.
"So this one is Iden Esterji," a Doom Reaper asked.
"Yes! I confirmed it with these very eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt!"
Zagnak answered with total confidence.
"Move. You're underfoot."
A Doom Reaper shoved him aside with a kick. Zagnak shrieked and hit the dirt — then shook off the soil, rose with wounded dignity, jabbed a finger at me, and snickered.
"Hahaha, human! Serves you right! A member of the lowliest species dares raise a hand against His Grace, Duke Ragnor? How does it feel, hmm? Being on the slaughtered end of the massacre for once?"
Zagnak looked absolutely delighted. Good for him. I'd count the debt I owed for stomping all over his miserable existence as paid in full right there.
"Iden Esterji."
The one standing at the center of the nine said, low and quiet.
"You will address him as 'His Grace,' you whelps."
I answered with a snort.
"Surrender. Lord Ragnor has commanded that you be spared."
"I'd say the one begging for his life right now isn't me."
"You will receive one warning only, Iden."
Slowly, I raised one hand. Ages ago, this had been a flourishing forest. The energy of dead trees hung thick in the air.
Whoooooo———
I stoked Fire Qi out of Wood Qi. The Fire Qi became wind, the wind became a searing gale, and the gale stripped the leaves from the black steelwoods.
"The one you face is a 'Transcendent.' Come at him with everything from the very first blow." The Doom Reapers snapped into their opening stances, crimson qi streaming from their weapons in thick, ropey ribbons.
"Strike!"
Nine streams of qi came surging at me. With my hands knotted into a seal, I pointed ahead and intoned a single word of power.
One word — and a thousand kalpas of flame answered.
FWOOOSH———!
A monstrous inferno erupted and swallowed heaven and earth. The Doom Reapers were devoured by the blaze in the space of a breath. The fire swelled like a living mountain, billowing with the momentum to roast the very sky.
"W-what... what even is this...?"
Zagnak's jaw dropped so low it nearly scraped the ground.
This was Blazing Inferno Heaven, deepened and reinforced now that I had stepped into the realm of the Immortals. In its base form, Blazing Inferno Heaven was a simple art that hammered enemies with pillars of fire — but Thousand Tribulations placed no limit on how many those pillars could be.
When the spell was withdrawn, nothing remained but gray ash. For hundreds of meters in every direction, the only living creature left was Zagnak.
"Zagnak."
His shoulders gave a violent jerk.
"You have something you'd like to say to me, don't you?"
Sweat poured down the goblin's pointed chin in rivulets.
"I-I just knew it — none other than Lord Iden, the 'Butcher of Andrasi' himself! I knew all along those wretches were no match for you, my lord! I only hammed it up a little — merely hoping to shake loose some information, that's all! Hahaha!"
Zagnak laughed awkwardly, then asked in a very small voice:
"...You're not going to kill me, are you?"
"I won't. Provided you guide me properly."
Keeping him alive as a guide promised far more profit than killing him. Besides, his existence was so utterly insignificant that even if he betrayed me again, it couldn't cost me a thing.
Zagnak guided us with genuine diligence. It was my first time venturing this deep into the Demon Realm. The goblin clambered over gorges and boulders without a moment's hesitation, as though scurrying about his own sitting room.
"If you look over there, my lord."
Zagnak pointed ahead. Countless craggy spires rose out of the dense fog.
"That there is the legend of the lizardfolk — the 'Promised Land.'"
What I had taken for rock formations were the ruins of buildings. Ruins upon ruins spread out in layered waves, like a frozen sea. From their staggering scale, I could measure the old Lizardman Kingdom at the height of its glory.
What did Zaktar mean to do once he took this place back?
Of one thing I was certain: whatever he set in motion here would go down as tremendous history. Clearing away even a fraction of the sprawled wreckage would be a task without end.
Before long, I came face to face with a colossal fissure. A chasm hundreds of meters wide and kilometers deep. The lizardman city had been cut clean at the waist by the rift.
"It is a scar left behind by the 'Lofty Will,'" Zagnak said, his tone abruptly reverent. "More than two hundred years past now, my lord. That is how the lizardman kingdom met its fall."
The Lofty Will.
I already had a vague suspicion that it was an epithet for the Demon King.
The Demon King was a living god enthroned at the apex of hundreds of thousands of demons. As Solitas stood over humankind, so the Demon King stood over demonkind.
Trailing Chris, I felt it all over again: the Demon King's power was truly staggering. Uncharted wilds without end, wherever the horizon turned. To think a land so vast had been warped by a single existence...
Was this how Sun Wukong felt, the moment he realized that no matter how far he somersaulted, he had never once left the Buddha's palm?
I still had much to learn. I still hadn't grasped even the first clue to divine power, the strength I had so recently gained.
But then, no one in this world could possibly have reached Immortality before me. If it were up to my heart, I'd have gone over to the Church of Solitas on the spot. Because if the path refused to show itself, I figured I might have no choice but to seize Solitas by the collar after all.
"The plaza is worth a look as well. If you'll come this way—"
"Shh."
I pressed a finger to my lips. A powerful demonic energy pulsed just nearby — an aura far greater than all nine Doom Reapers combined.
Swish.
At length, the owner of that mana revealed himself. A young man with black hair and ash-gray skin. His eyes were bloodshot crimson, and black scales had broken out across his flesh in patches. Save for the hair and the coloring, he was the spitting image of someone I knew.
"...Chris."
I had guessed wrong, then. I'd assumed someone had spirited Chris away and fled — but Chris himself was the source of that mana.
The boy had carried the family's expectations on his back since childhood, celebrated at every turn as a genius. But the demonic energy rolling off him now was beyond anything that league implied. It belonged to an entirely different order of existence... so much so that I was certain a god had lent him a hand.
"So you did come hunting me, Iden." Chris raised his scaled arm and grinned. "I should have been like this from the very start. I let it drag on far too long."
"Given up on being human, have you?"
"No, Iden. It was humanity that gave up on me. Not once — not one single time — did you people ever treat me fairly."
"Who was it? Who made you into this?"
"Ah, you couldn't even begin to guess. Just what manner of being has blessed me."
"Don't care. What I want to know is the one who urged you to accept that blessing."
Chris was a ruined human being. The evils he had committed towered far, far beyond anything forgivable.
And yet.
It struck me only now: however extraordinary a child he might have been, didn't it always seem strange — a boy of five attempting assassination?
What if the demons had exploited his father's absence, whispering wicked impulses into his ear without end? What if his fall had been a play scripted by the demons, staged with the cold intent of dragging our whole family into ruin?
"What difference does any of that make now? What matters is that at long last, you and I stand face to face. Just the two of us."
"Meaningless, Chris. If you wanted to challenge me, you should have done it with a strength that was entirely your own."
"A challenge?"
Chris's voice turned ragged.
"You arrogant bastard. You always treated me exactly like that. As though you'd lived more life than I had — as though you'd earned the right to sit on top of my head!"
"You won't believe it, but it happens to be true. I have lived longer than you."
"Shut uuuup—!"
"Waah!" Zagnak toppled over backward. The ruins groaned and swayed as if to collapse outright. Chris's mana, fearsome enough before, was now climbing without any ceiling in sight.
Then, quite suddenly, I sensed something familiar stirring within him. Divine power — the very strength whose awakening even I had experienced only a short while ago.
"Hnnngh..."
Chris opened his mouth. Black smoke seeped from between his cracked lips. Demonic vapor, no mistaking it. His gaze had gone loose and glazed, like a man drowning in a drug.
"You had best give it everything you have, Iden."
Chris said.
"Because the me standing here right now... is invincible."
— The Northern Grand Duke's Daoist Arts Are No Joke · Episode 124 —