Extreme Devotion
"How devoted."
Bloom studied me carefully before he opened his mouth.
"So you've already figured everything out, then. Somehow you even managed to turn my employee."
"I've been breaking livestock in from a young age."
"Is that so."
Bloom let out a short scoff and went on.
"But there's something I don't understand."
"What?"
"Without our help, how do you intend to deal with the plague spreading through your territory? Even if you kill me, your house will slowly be wiped out by the disease."
His gaze drifted to the flames wreathing my sword.
"This is no time for you to be pointing a blade at my children. You ought to be bowing your head and begging me for the cure. Is a moment of revenge more important than your nest?"
He wasn't wrong. The reason I wanted revenge on him was precisely because they had harmed my nest.
But now that I had every scrap of information I needed, there was no reason left to hesitate.
Whoosh!
I swung my sword lightly. Flames leapt free along the arc of the cut. Plants that touched the fire screamed in weird, unearthly voices.
Still not satisfied, I raised the blade again—
"S-stop!"
Bloom's carefully composed expression cracked as he shouted in sudden panic.
But the fire riding my sword was not light enough to be stopped by words alone.
Whoosh!
This time I burned the plants beyond them as well. Looking at the charred remains, I muttered,
"Wow. Looks like a slash-and-burn farmer just rolled through…"
"You bastard…!"
Bloom ground his teeth. I smirked.
"The materials for the medicine are all in this institute, so why worry about that?"
"…I told you clearly. You need specialized knowledge to compound those materials."
"Do you really think that knowledge exists only with your people?"
I could leave the compounding to Alturo. Even if it took a little longer than these freaks, it would be finished well before the summer sowing.
"While I'm at it, I might as well burn this place down and start farming."
I set the tip of my sword against a small flower. Sensing the faint heat, it trembled.
Bloom clenched his teeth and roared.
"You son of a bitch!!!"
At the same instant, the large and small plants that had been so quiet transformed.
Some of the giant flowers had grown teeth. A tower of a tree began to wield its branches like whips.
Whoosh!
A thick vine swept across the floor and lunged for me.
The moment I leapt lightly aside, the massive tree swung a branch in a wide arc.
Slash!
I cut it down—but the assault didn't end there. A giant flower bared its fangs and swallowed me whole.
In an instant I was sealed inside its maw and the world went dark.
Before the acid dripping from the palate could touch me, I swung my sword and carved the entire jaw open.
Whoosh!
The second my feet hit the ground, monstrous plants of every shape came at me from all sides, stabbing, biting, thrashing.
"What a goddamn variety…"
I clicked my tongue, bent my knees, and launched myself hard upward.
Rising almost high enough to scrape the glass ceiling, I looked down. Mouths gaped open everywhere. It was a plant hell.
"What a pain."
Before I dropped, I drew holy power into my sword.
Wind and flame coiled together along the blade and looked down on the plants like a sun.
I swung as I fell and poured it all downward.
A storm of fire and wind crashes downward, flooding the floor and devouring every plant in a roaring tide.
Whoooooosh!
As if a storm itself had been unleashed, a torrent of flame and wind poured down. The moment Flame Wind touched the floor it spread in every direction, swallowing the surrounding plants like a wave.
Like the sun just farted fire…
I shoved the useless poetry aside and focused on landing.
Wherever my feet touched, only ash and soil remained. The fire around me spread outward in a slowly widening ring.
Crash!
Something burst through that ring of flame and charged.
An ashen-skinned demon. Bloom, Apostle of the Evil Book Society, had completed his demonic transformation.
Whoom!
He swung a massive fist. I slipped aside.
In the space he had just vacated, I faintly saw water dripping.
I asked in disbelief.
"…Hey. Are you crying?"
Bloom didn't answer. He simply lunged again. This time I caught his fist on the flat of my blade.
And there it was—moisture welling at the corners of his eyes.
"This bastard is actually crying."
Apparently watching his plants burn had broken him. Given that he called them his children, I supposed it made sense.
"Shut up!"
He spat the words through tears and threw another punch. I hopped lightly backward.
He scrubbed at his eyes with one arm and then complained in deadly earnest.
"I never expected you to wield holy power. By now a few of them should have regenerated…"
He had remade the plants with demonic energy, so under ordinary circumstances that would have been true.
If I had still used mana the way I did in my past life, I never would have come to a place like this in the first place.
Whoosh!
A rush of wind came from behind me.
I stepped lightly to the side. A razor-sharp branch punched through the space where I had stood.
Still alive, huh.
It was the largest tree in the institute.
But Flame Wind had already done its work; several of its branches were blackened and burned, leaving it looking thoroughly pathetic.
Swish!
Bloom's follow-up attacks came in a chain, and the branches lashed in from every angle. Even I was forced to focus purely on defense.
Branches had almost no limit on reach, so they never got in Bloom's way. The assault came without a single gap to breathe.
Like being surrounded by a forest of spears.
I slipped Bloom's blows, cut the branches, and answered everything with cold precision.
If I forced an attack now, something would punch clean through me. So I weaved like a snake and waited for an opening.
Now.
A natural gap opened between Bloom's barrage and the tree's. After I had kept cutting the thrusting branches, their length had shortened.
Swish!
I swept my sword and knocked Bloom away from me.
In the same breath I spun and fixed my eyes on the tree.
That one first.
Its offense was threatening; its defense was garbage. An immobile giant of a tree was nothing more than easy prey.
"No!"
A desperate scream tore from behind me the moment I charged the tree.
I ignored it, leapt high into the air, and—feeling for all the world like a sturdy lumberjack—raised my flame-wrapped sword overhead.
Slash!
I cut clean through.
But contrary to my expectation, what hit the floor was not a length of trunk. It was a demon's severed arm.
The instant my blade came down, Bloom had thrown himself in front of the tree.
Whoosh!
Branches thick with rage filled my vision. I jumped backward and opened the distance.
"…Unbelievable."
I looked at Bloom, who had lost an arm for the sake of a tree.
"You can't have forgotten that regeneration slows when I hit you… Did you raise that thing yourself from a seed or something?"
Blood dripped steadily from Bloom's stump. He planted himself in front of the tree and pleaded.
"Can't you at least spare this one? I raised it from a seed."
So he really had carried it from seed to this size.
"How long?"
He answered with complete seriousness.
"As of today, one thousand three hundred and seventy-five days."
"You're out of your damn mind."
I snorted and leveled my sword tip.
"But I have no reason to leave either of you alive."
"You don't need me. Just spare Malphira."
"Who's Malphira?"
"The name of the tree behind me."
I nodded.
"How devoted."
I had wandered the world in my past life and met every kind of freak imaginable, so I wasn't especially shocked.
"Then where exactly are the materials for the medicine?"
"In the specially controlled room at the end of the first basement floor. Baron Scalen's death derailed the original plan, but the preparations themselves were already finished."
He spilled the information with surprising readiness.
"I see."
"If you want, I'll even compound it for you. Truthfully, it never needed a full week."
"Don't bother. Why did the Evil Book Society specifically target our territory? If the answer is boring, one thousand three hundred and seventy-five days becomes Malphira's lifespan."
Through interrogation I had already learned from Throw that the Evil Book Society had moved in order to get a leash on our house.
But that was all. I still didn't know the deeper reason.
"Because your name is written in the Primordial Evil Book—that is, the scripture of the Demon God."
"My name is in the Primordial Evil Book?"
I was certain nothing like that had happened in my previous life.
Was it because I had already begun to twist the original flow of events?
"Yes. To put it simply, the teaching was this: if we do not remain wary of you, one day we will be swallowed by you."
That explained everything.
From the Evil Book Society's perspective, even my current self was someone worth watching—but not yet someone who warranted dispatching an Apostle.
I hadn't even been revealed as a Holy Knight yet.
But if my name is written in the Demon God's scripture, the story changes completely.
I asked,
"Besides you, is there anyone else in the Evil Book Society targeting our house?"
"Right now, only me. But if I disappear, someone else will fill the vacancy. And next time they will be far less subtle."
No one knew that better than I did.
Their greatest strength was a viciousness equal to any demon's.
With Alturo soon taking up permanent residence at the manor, I wouldn't have to worry much for a while…
"A stubborn grudge, then."
I tightened my grip on the sword. The flames burned even wilder.
From Baron Scalen, who had started everything out of pure greed, all the way to the Demon God himself.
This cursed bond, stretching from my previous life, would not end until I had wiped out the Evil Book Society and taken the Demon God's head.
"Is there anything else you need from me?"
At that question I looked at Bloom.
"No. If there is, it would only be your life."
"I see. Then, as promised—spare Malphira at least."
He looked ready to offer his own neck at any moment.
Part of it was that the fight was already decided, but Malphira was clearly that precious to him.
I gazed at the giant old tree and said,
"Plants really are strange. You give a tiny seed a little nourishment and it grows into something this enormous."
"Hmm. You understand more than I expected. That's exactly why I chose to study plants."
Even a barren field that stretches empty to the horizon looks completely different when harvest time approaches.
Golden wheat swaying in the wind, neat rows of green leaves…
Depending on who plants what seed, the landscape of that field changes forever.
"And human emotion is exactly the same. At first you think it's some trivial feeling that will fade someday—then one day you look and it's grown this large."
"What are you…?"
Deep in my chest, something churned like magma. My head felt stuffed and airless, as if something were clogging it shut.
I had thought my rage had cooled a little since the regression. In truth it had only grown so heavy that it no longer shook easily.
Of course, having reached the stage of Wrath, I could control it—but I had never been the type to simply endure anger.
In that case, the only option left was to vent the accumulated fury.
"You people planted the seed first."
I lowered my stance and aimed the tip of my sword as if to drive it straight through them. Then I poured even more holy power into the blade.
Whooooosh!
Flame roared violently along the edge.
I gathered that fire at the tip and condensed it into a small orb of pure flame.
Rumble—!!
In moments the fireball shuddered as if about to burst, its color deepening into a richer crimson.
"……!"
Sensing that something was very wrong, Bloom spun to get out of range.
I spoke to him calmly.
"Can you really afford to run?"
His movement froze. The tip of my sword was still aimed squarely at Malphira.
"Damn it…!"
He scrambled desperately toward the tree.
The pitiful sight drew a dry laugh from me. By the time I came back to myself, my sword was already thrusting toward them.
A concentrated orb of Wrath-forged flame erupts in a searing linear blast of pure destructive heat.
BOOOOOOM!
A thunderous roar that seemed to shake the earth itself, and a blast of scorching heat shot out in a straight line.
Bloom managed to take a fraction of it with his bare body—but he could not withstand the power that kept driving forward.
Crack-crack-crack!
The flames punched through Bloom's upper body, bored a hole clean through the trunk of the old tree, and finally smashed through the wall of the research institute itself.
When the fire finally died down, all that remained were a demon's two legs and a tree with a gaping hole driven through it.
"Hah…"
A strange sense of relief washed over me, followed by a wave of exhaustion.
Even wearing the sacred relic sandals of Vertior, using two major techniques back-to-back was bound to take its toll.
Still, I was far from immobilized. I walked over to the demon's remaining legs and offered a prayer.
Goddess. A demon who loved his own but could never love other humans or plants is departing. I had quite a time trampling and burning him like a weed…
Then not only the two legs, but every scrap of plant demonic energy scattered through the air gathered into a single black mass.
Afterward the demonic energy was purified, transformed into holy power, and flowed into me.
A fine amount.
It helped that Bloom had been an Apostle, and that I had absorbed the plants' demonic energy as well.
But I was still far from reaching the stage of Sorrow. The higher the stage, the steeper the gap became.
Even so, the growth rate was excellent enough to leave me thoroughly satisfied.
It even restored some of my fatigue.
Just as I was about to turn and leave—
Tap—
Something fell from above.
I thought for a moment it might be animal droppings. It turned out to be a tiny seed that had dropped from one of Malphira's branches.
"So there was a baby."
Suddenly Bloom's final actions made even more sense.
"They were a good couple."
I offered a brief prayer for their rest and picked up the seed.
A faint demonic energy lingered inside it. Left alone, it would no doubt grow up just as vicious as Malphira.
Maybe I should plant it in front of the manor.
If I could turn it to our side, it might prove useful.
The only worry was whether it would remember this day and come looking for revenge.
An ordinary plant never would—but this was a plant remade by the Evil Book Society.
Hmm.
After a brief moment of thought, I poured holy power into the seed and pushed the demonic energy out.
Holy power and demonic energy seemed to wrestle for a moment; the seed quivered, then quickly settled.
The holy power had successfully taken root inside.
Well, look at that. It works.
Apparently the seed had already been modified to accept energy of either kind. I had simply replaced the demonic energy with holy power.
Information on the Evil Book Society, and a special tree on top of it…
Bloom had been generous to the end.
I tucked the seed away inside my clothes and started walking toward the exit.
It was time to finally put an end to the plague that had tormented Luminara Territory for half a year.