The Hegemon Points the Way (2)
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Her body would not respond. Strength refused to gather in her limbs.
When was the last time she had hurt this much? She couldn't remember feeling anything like it in recent months.
She forced her eyes open with great effort and tried flexing her fingers. She could move, technically — but her strength was a distant, unreachable thing. Her vision swam in a blurry haze, and a dull ringing filled her ears.
Extreme exhaustion. That was the diagnosis, plain and simple.
"Ugh."
Had she rushed things too much?
Something had shifted within the silver flame in her body while she was practicing the Dimensional Slash. It had been only the faintest of movements, but she had been able to feel the difference.
She had trained while fixating on that strange sensation, and at last the silver flame had spread through her whole body, burning hot — and then her slash through empty air had cut into something solid.
A sucking force had pulled at her through the cracked seam in the void, dragging her whole body toward it along with the wind.
In that moment, she had been forced to choose. Surrender herself to the flow — or let it go.
She knew perfectly well on her own. What had just happened was nothing but chance, not a result earned by her skill alone.
But the reason she had hesitated was a vague intuition that if she threw herself into that current, she might finally grasp the key to the Dimensional Slash.
She had been stonewalled by an enormous barrier for the longest time, her practice stalled in maddening stagnation. Carving down something that did not exist could never be easy.
Even as she hesitated, the seam was closing. She had to decide, and quickly.
Then she realized she could no longer feel the silver flame within her. She had no idea whether the phenomenon was temporary, but sensing that an opportunity like this would not come easily, she flung herself in without hesitation.
"!!"
A colossal torrent engulfed her. It was like diving naked into a wave of solid steel. She did not resist. She simply felt everything — the current, the texture, the pressure, the speed — and etched it all into her body.
The silver flame in her body had vanished, but the uncanny sensation of the dimension made physically real was clearer than it had ever been.
Time passed, endless as eternity itself, and when her power level — already drained to a mere 98% before — finally hit rock bottom, she sensed the danger and swung her sword with everything she had left, tearing herself free.
"Haah…"
Perhaps she had burned through too much mental strength. Her eyes, which had barely been holding themselves open, began to sink shut once more.
When she opened them again, countless people were staring down at her.
"A person appearing from the Sacred Fire? And in the middle of the Grand Fire Rite, no less?"
"What else would you call it but a holy maiden descending upon us?"
"True enough. Even fooling the eyes of all those masters gathered there would be no small feat, eh?"
"Shh! Mind your tongues. You know how much talk there's been about that very matter."
That was the exchange among the elders of the Heavenly Demon Cult, held before Virdel had regained consciousness.
"But judging by the look of that armor, it's a woman, no? Why is the Cult Leader so worked up over her? The holy maiden can't interfere in cult affairs outside the rites anyway."
"Surely that would be the legend of the First Heavenly Demon?"
"The First Heavenly Demon? Ah…"
"You know — the legend that he donned a jet-black suit of demon armor and ruled the world with the Heavenly Demon Sword."
"Ahh, aye… and how he came to the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, left behind the Sacred Fire, and founded our cult."
"It was long ago, but still."
At present, the Cult Leader was locked in a red-faced argument with the representatives of the Council of Elders and the Holy Maiden Order.
A few of the elders watched them from a cautious distance.
"My, how the Cult Leader's standing has fallen."
"Well, the current one has stirred up one crisis after another, starting with the matter of succession…"
"He did manage some unity with the invasion of the Central Plains recently — until that fellow, the so-called Invisible Divine Sword, showed up and ruined it all. Tsk tsk."
In the previous generation, openly pushing back against the Cult Leader's words like this would have been unthinkable.
Cheon Yu-gang, the 32nd Cult Leader of the Heavenly Demon Cult, had not ascended his throne through legitimate means. A man who had schemed his way to power through every manner of treachery — naturally, he had no shortage of opponents within the cult.
Worse still, upon taking the throne he had cast aside the shrewdness that once defined him, becoming a leader brimming with nothing but greed and obsession. That the elders pushed back was only to be expected. Even among the cult's most loyal, many chafed at the current state of affairs.
"In any case, the decision has been made to place her upon the altar. Let's get moving."
"Indeed."
And so Virdel was laid upon the altar of the Sacred Fire.
"…How unpleasant."
She lowered her head and took stock of her surroundings.
Inside an enormous underground cavern, torches hung at sparse intervals, casting a dim light across the dark plaza. She was laid out atop the altar, and beside it a great hearth roared with blue flame.
Some distance away, people in unfamiliar dress had formed a loose circle around her, observing.
It was like being a monkey at the zoo.
Her mood soured rapidly. Unpleasant memories of the past began to seep up from below — the trauma that had taught her to loathe humanity.
Ah…
Whenever the crowd had looked up at her, as they always had, curses and stones had flown, along with eyes full of contempt and hatred. Even the people screaming at her like mortal enemies as they hurled their rocks had surely known she had done them no harm.
But there was no trace of reason in a crowd's madness. They had simply needed someone to curse, to tear at, to hate.
She had understood that as well as anyone — but understanding and accepting were different matters. Negative emotions of every kind had rained down on her in quantities beyond the word cruel, and she could do nothing but wear away under them.
And what had worn her down the most of all was…
Not the curses. Not the stones. Not the gazes of others — but her own feelings.
In her withering heart, negativity piled up as fast as any crowd's fury could feed it. At some point she had come to hate herself for the choices she had once made — and to hate the tribespeople whose inadequacy had left her with no choice but to step forward. And in the end, even her grandfather the chieftain and her own mother were not spared; resentment would flare up in her unbidden.
She had been so horrified by that self that she had buried her emotions and severed her thoughts altogether.
If not for that last reunion with her mother, she might well have lost her mind for good.
What remained to her then was a deep, vicious misanthropy — and, layered atop it, an immense interest and curiosity toward the Administrator, one might say. She had wondered, at times, whether meeting him would finally burn that misanthropy away. Everything else had been secondary.
As she lifted her eyes and looked down from the altar, countless gazes met hers, each carrying its own flavor of desire.
Throb—
In some eyes, wariness. In others, greed. Some looked at her as nothing more than a thing to be used, and others harbored desires too foul to name.
Strange to say, she found she understood their words perfectly.
Fwoosh—
"The heavens have sent down an envoy to aid us! If you are awake, present yourself and be counted!"
"To hide one's face before the Sacred Fire is the height of disrespect. Might I suggest we begin by removing that helm?"
"The armor wouldn't come off earlier, eh? I'm curious what lies beneath."
"If it's a woman, then as it happens the Cult Leader's seat for a new wife remains empty…"
They hurled their words over one another, casting appraising glances up at her. Some rested their hands on the hilts at their waists, watchful. Others were advancing toward her, slow and deliberate.
And then—
CLUNK— FWOOSH!
The underground cavern shuddered all at once, and the Sacred Fire in the great hearth erupted into a raging inferno.
In an instant, the faces of every cultist who had been watching her went grim and rigid. Even Cheon Yu-gang, 32nd Cult Leader of the Heavenly Demon Cult, was no exception.
"Wh-why is the Sacred Fire—!"
"What could this mean?"
"The Heavenly Demon descends! Ten thousand horses bow!"
"Heh heh."
"The Heavenly Demon descends! Ten thousand horses bow!"
"Wha—?"
Chaos exploded through the chamber. Shock froze every face in the cavern; some were already pounding their heads against the floor, shrieking the cry of descent, while others had outright drawn their blades.
With the raging Sacred Fire blazing at her back, her lips parted slowly.
"Answer what I ask of you, starting now."
Her frost-blue gaze swept across the crowd below the altar.
How exactly had she brought order to the Empire, once upon a time?
Nothing special, really.
It wasn't as though she had gone around killing and destroying everything in her path. The Administrator, for his part, hadn't seemed particularly fond of that approach either.
But if there was one thing she shared with the Administrator, one point where their souls resonated, it was this:
Anything that grates on me gets cut down, root and stem.
She who had named herself a demon had never been one for hesitation.
With a single exception.
Ordinary humans — those who lived humbly and honestly, wanting nothing — she left alone.
But those who indulged in greed, who committed crimes, who preyed upon others…
Every last one of them was eliminated.
Granted, that alone had been enough to blow the Empire apart at the seams.
Still — perhaps, just perhaps, she had gone around inventing reasons to kill humans on purpose.
"What are your sins?"
At her words, an ugly emotion settled over the faces of the cultists below.