The Price of Survival
They hadn't mobilized the full might of the holy order, assuming a solitary demon would hardly warrant such extravagance, but they had nonetheless assembled a premier corps of exorcists. After all, their adversary was still a creature of the abyss.
Yet what in God's name was happening?
"Aaaargh!"
"Save me—someone save me!"
"The brothers are afflicted with terror! What is the status of the mental wards?!"
"We are doing everything we can!"
They were being swept away like autumn leaves before a gale.
Every desperate effort, every sacrifice, every scrap of holy magic, every fervent prayer—all of it dissolved into meaningless froth.
"Ah... ah, ah, ah, ah..."
"Brother, pull yourself together!"
"Priests, mages, dispel it this instant! It has to be some sort of panic curse!"
"It—it won't lift! We're pouring every dispel spell we have into them, but...!"
And what manner of foul sorcery was that dreadful magic that hollowed out a person's very soul?
They had hastily dragged the stricken priests from the vanguard to focus on treatment, but their efforts had proven utterly futile. It did not take long for them to realize the horrifying truth: according to the fundamental laws of magic, the victims' current state was already registered as "normal."
"These men... are healthy."
"Healthy?! In what conceivable realm does this look healthy?!"
"I am telling you, they are not suffering from any status condition!"
No matter how many purification rites or dispel spells they cast, the afflicted showed not the slightest sign of recovery—for the simple, maddening reason that they were not afflicted by an abnormal status. Spells designed to restore the abnormal to the normal could only function when an actual aberration existed. It was the exact same principle as casting a spell to cure blindness on someone who had been born without eyeballs in the first place; holy magic could not return sight to empty sockets.
If it was not a status effect, then their condition was most likely an existential defect—a physical severing of the self. In theory, advanced regenerative magic capable of restoring lost flesh ought to have mended the damage. Yet even that proved useless. No matter what healing spells they showered upon them, the victims of the demonic art known as Dementia remained completely unmoored. Trying to heal them felt like casting restorative magic on a human being and waiting for a dog's tail to sprout.
"D-Demon...! You filthy demons!"
"A demon? Where—gah?! What are you doing?!"
"Possession! Restrain the possessed—no, kill them! We don't have the luxury of taking them alive!"
"Kill them?! Dispossession is our sacred duty!"
"Who has time to capture and exorcise them in this madness?!"
Now the fiend was even resorting to possession.
Save for the priests decapitated at the very beginning of the encounter, the demon had not slain a single person since.
To uninitiated ears, that might have sounded like mercy. It was anything but.
The creature was toying with them as if they were playthings. Like an abusive child fearful of breaking his favorite toys, he hadn't unleashed a single direct damaging spell. Instead, from stripping away their very identities to inflicting madness, sheer despair, and possession, he was utterly desecrating the sacred concept of personhood itself.
"Y-Your Grace..."
"Have you come to plead for a retreat?"
"...Yes."
Ha. Hahaha...
Retreating without casualties would cost the necks of every high-ranking priest attached to the exorcist corps, but retreating after suffering such catastrophic devastation meant only his head would roll.
To think he had placed his faith in these pathetic wretches and marched all this way. He could barely contain the burning humiliation churning in his gut.
"Even if we turn tail, do you truly believe that monster will let us walk away?"
"Earlier, the demon stated that if we departed quietly, he would spare our lives—"
"That was earlier! After we have launched dozens of hostile assaults against him, you think that offer still stands?"
Opportunistic dogs. Incompetent fools who couldn't even control their own subordinates, reducing his desperate effort to resolve this peacefully to complete ruin.
"And tell me, Sir Knight—do you honestly place your faith in the words of a demon?"
"N-No, that is not what I—"
"What do you mean, 'not what you meant'?! You are openly accepting a fiend's words as gospel and seeking to obey him! You even harbor designs to forge a demonic pact... Gasp! Men, seize him! The demon has taken hold of his soul!"
"What?! No, Your Grace, what madness is this—unhand me!"
Whether he stood his ground or fled, the fate awaiting him remained unchanged.
He refused to die alone.
Did you truly think you could scurry away while leaving me to burn?
"Hear me, all of you! Do not be deceived by the demon's silver tongue! There is no greater folly than placing your trust in a fiend! If you turn your backs, you will surely take a blade between your shoulder blades! Should you perish in such cowardice, how will you ever dare meet God's gaze when you stand before the throne?!"
"His Grace speaks the truth!"
"For the Church!"
They were all going down together. Every last one of them. Not a single soul would be spared.
Good grief, these fanatics. What in the world was wrong with them?
Back when I was fleshing out the narrative roadmap for Noah, I really should have dialed up the realism for the Seraphia Church. These people were utterly impossible to reason with.
"What in God's name is that demon?! Look at those horns—it has the traits of a beast-kin, but the body and face are entirely humanoid!"
"Run! Everyone run!"
"I refuse to die alongside these lunatic zealots! Hey, let's get the hell out of here!"
Unlike the clergy, the hired mages serving with the exorcism corps seized the first opening they could find and bolted. I didn't bother pursuing them.
My goal from the start had simply been to kick them out of Montpellier. If they were willing to see themselves out, there was no need to waste energy hunting them down.
"For Lady Seraphia!"
"Slay the abomination!"
The ordained priests and the templars under their command, however, were an entirely different breed. They fought, quite literally, down to the very last man—until their minds were wiped clean or they collapsed into raving lunacy.
They weren't dead, but if left unattended like this, they might as well be corpses.
Now then, the townsfolk...
I focused my awareness. The citizens were terrified out of their wits, yet rather than fleeing the city, they had all barricaded themselves inside their homes. They must have missed their window to escape during the chaos.
As I concentrated, the suffocating pall of fear blanketing the city pressed against my senses, alongside countless pulsing life signatures. And the object of that bone-deep dread was not the holy order that had been preparing to burn them alive only minutes ago—it was directed, without a shred of doubt, squarely at me.
...Well, I suppose that makes sense. I did overdo it.
If I were in their shoes, I'd react the same way. At least the Church had peddled a rational justification—that leaving people infected with demonic energy unchecked would turn them into monsters—to justify burning the populace. But me? I had crashed the party simply because I couldn't stand the sight of those pompous priests.
To top it off, the Church forces were at least fellow humans and demi-humans. Meanwhile, even if I was a soft-hearted pushover on the inside, my exterior was the picture-perfect archetype of a terrifying archdemon raid boss. Of course they were scared shitless.
So... what now?
Every church operative who had set foot in the square had been neutralized.
Except for the unlucky bastards whose heads had rolled at the very beginning, not a single priest had died by my hand. Then again, there wasn't a single sane priest left standing in Montpellier either.
In hindsight, knowing I could just rewind time had made me act a bit too recklessly.
Wait... should I actually turn back time?
If I rewound time to revive the dead or restore their fractured minds, these zealots would probably lunge at my throat the very next second. No, not probably—they definitely would.
Rewinding time wasn't healing; it was literally snapping temporal coordinates back to when they were whole. That meant their memories cut off cleanly at the moment of the rewind.
I had already verified this when I resurrected that dead servant who had trespassed in my house. The poor guy had been brutally slaughtered by that demonized flesh-eating flower, yet upon returning to life, he had zero recollection of the horror.
In other words, if I rewound time for these priests, they would just charge at me all over again, shouting their holy slogans about vanquishing the wicked demon. That would force me to subdue them a second time, and for some reason, Faust's demonic physiology was pathologically incapable of subduing anyone gently.
Hmm... what should I—
"Ugh... ah... ngh..."
Oh, right. There was still this guy.
He stood out in my memory because he had been practically the only priest who had genuinely considered cutting a deal with me earlier.
"You... demon scum..."
Well, look at that. He still recognized exactly who I was, even while every other priest who had arrived with him was wandering the border between reality and waking nightmare. Seeing this, the bishop had clearly earned his rank leading the exorcism corps.
"Let us make a pact."
"A... pact? What blasphemous nonsense are you spouting—"
"Fret not. There is no one within earshot capable of deciphering our words."
Honestly, why keep up the pious act now? Earlier, when I offered to let him walk away, his eyes practically gleamed and he immediately asked about the terms. Why start caring about appearances at this late hour?
"Ah... aah... ah, aah..."
"The demons... the demons are everywhere..."
"Save me... someone save meee..."
Just as I said, not a single person present was in any state to eavesdrop on our conversation.
A few were curled on the ground, trembling uncontrollably while muttering mindless syllables. Others had completely lost their minds, swinging wildly at invisible monsters, while still others were sinking into the quagmires of their own shadows, trapped in living nightmares. Aside from the bishop himself, not a single cleric possessed an ounce of sanity.
"..."
At my words, the bishop held his breath and darted his eyes across the courtyard before finally giving a stiff nod.
See? My eye for people was as sharp as ever.
"Gather these wretches and take them back with you. Return not until my demonic energy has completely dissipated from the townsfolk."
"And the price... is it the same as what you offered before?"
"Indeed. I shall spare your life."
I could have cleaned up this mess myself, of course, but something told me that if I kept doing everything with my own hands, I would eventually lose what little remained of my human identity. Even now, Faust's demonic instincts frequently hijacked my body before my conscious mind could intervene. I needed to resist that momentum wherever possible.
Besides... to be perfectly blunt, rolling up my sleeves to haul away defeated zealots would completely destroy my majestic aura. It was far more fitting for an endgame archdemon to stand aloof with folded arms while ordering someone else to take out the trash.
"...No. If I dare return like that, they will execute—"
"It is better than dying this very instant."
"—..."
The bishop's hesitation was mercifully brief.
Man... The junior priests had thrown themselves into the slaughter with fiery zeal, screaming about holy purification, yet this high-ranking shepherd of God was so ruthlessly pragmatic it almost left a sour taste in my mouth.
Well, worked out great for me.