Childcare (Part 3)
"Thank you for your hard work today as well, Father Martino."
"You worked hard too, Brother. Go on in and get some rest."
Phew... barely survived another one.
There had been far too many patients lately, and exhaustion was beginning to wear him down to the bone. Just a few days ago, Martino had dismissed it as a passing anomaly—an unusually busy spell, nothing more. But now that it had dragged on day after day without respite, any clinical curiosity had vanished, replaced by the sheer, desperate misery of being worked half to death.
Worse, their symptoms were all nearly identical, making the work feel like tedious, endless drudgery.
Under normal circumstances, an identical cluster of symptoms would point straight to an outbreak of plague. Yet what these people suffered from could not be explained by any known pestilence. Auditory hallucinations, waking visions, crippling nightmares—and on top of that, an emotional fragility so severe that grown men cowered like beaten dogs. A plague simply did not manifest that way.
Such afflictions were almost always the work of a demon. Martino had scoured the city for signs of a fiend's presence, keeping his senses peeled for the slightest taint.
And came up completely empty.
Not only had he failed to find a single trace, but the citizens were frankly far too intact to have crossed paths with true evil. If a demon had genuinely manifested to wreak havoc, it would never have contented itself with mere psychological mischief.
And so, without the faintest clue as to the underlying cause, he had spent the better part of a month tending to a relentless flood of suffering souls. It was driving him insane.
I need some air, Martino thought with a heavy sigh. A walk might clear this suffocating weight off my chest.
The brook murmured gently over smooth stones.
Man, the air out here is incredible. The water was crystalline, and the rancid, sulfurous reek of the city was completely absent. It was an environment so bursting with vibrant life that simply breathing it in brought an involuntary peace to my mind.
Of course, my mind and my body were two entirely different matters. Being trapped in the flesh of an archdemon, my physical form wasn't experiencing peace so much as throwing a silent, frantic fit of pure agony at all the pristine holy vitality around it.
Lucia... she's holding up.
I focused and switched on Mana Sight, observing Lucia where I had laid her to rest a short distance away. Translucent ribbons of dense demonic mana were steadily unraveling from her small frame, diffusing into the open air. The forest, rich with primal life force, was drinking in the excess energy and devouring it whole.
Holy crap... it actually works.
Both the original Faust and I had only known the principle in theory; neither of us had ever put it into practice. After a full year of marinating in the ungodly miasma and magi rolling off my demonic physiology, I had feared the worst, but seeing her purge it this rapidly meant she might recover far sooner than expected.
Her breathing settled into a quiet, rhythmic slumber.
The treatment was so effective that the child, who only moments ago had been writhing and whimpering in sheer agony, was now sleeping like a log as if none of it had ever happened. Beads of sweat mixed with crystalline mana stones were still popping up through her pores, but she seemed to have grown numb to that level of discomfort.
Uh... well, I'm glad she's improving, but to go from near-fatal agony to sleeping like a baby... I mean, it's great, but it's a little unsettling.
Baffled yet profoundly relieved, I leaned over and began gently wiping away the sweat and the gritty, blood-red pebbles clinging to her pale skin. The cloth turned a deep, bruised crimson almost instantly. Her body was still practically overflowing with foreign mana; no matter how many times I scrubbed, the towel came away stained.
She didn't have it forced into her—she just absorbed ambient spillage. How on earth did this much mana build up inside a toddler?
Even in a mana-dense environment, the human body typically functioned like a cup: once full to the brim, any excess simply spilled over and dissipated, making severe mana overload almost impossible under normal circumstances. Lucia's vessel, however, wasn't a rigid cup. It was more like an elastic balloon.
She had stretched and expanded, soaking up everything that touched her until she finally hit a catastrophic breaking point. If my hypothesis was correct, her natural aptitude for magic was terrifyingly vast. Yet the thought brought no joy. That ridiculous talent was the very reason she was lying here, weeping crimson stones from every pore.
Granted, my own negligence in failing to suppress my aura was largely to blame, but... Wait a second.
Were mana stones always this color?
Weren't they supposed to be... blue?
Every mana stone I had ever coded or seen on screen in Noah, not to mention the mountain of raw reagents sitting inside Faust's subspace dimensional vault, had glowed with a pure azure radiance. Pure mana was blue energy by default. Mana stones, being nothing more than crystallized, solid-state mana, were fundamentally bound to that cerulean hue.
So what the hell were these? The resonance felt unmistakably like a mana stone, but they looked like raw bloodstones. Why in the world were they blackish-red...?
Oh.
My hand drifted up. I opened my palm, focused my intent, and watched as plumes of demonic mana coiled lazily from my clawed fingertips. It billowed like ink in water—a sinister, swirling blend of crimson and void-black, identical down to the microscopic hue of the crystals shedding from Lucia's skin.
...Fuck. It's me.
Of course it was. She had contracted acute mana poisoning from my leaking magi; naturally, whatever her body purged would bear my personal signature. A wave of sickening guilt washed over me. I was supposed to be keeping her alive, yet I kept finding new and horrifying ways to torture the poor kid.
...More importantly, was this safe? A fragile human child had just internalized and processed the raw essence of a high-ranking archdemon.
"...Daddy?"
A soft, trembling voice broke my downward spiral. Lucia stirred, blinking awake, and immediately grew frantic upon realizing she was in an unfamiliar clearing. She must have known full well that I was a horned, terrifying monster rather than a man, yet she clung to me as her father without a shred of doubt.
"Yes. I am here."
"Hehe..."
Cold sweat still slicked her forehead, but her mind was completely lucid. The moment my voice reached her, the panic melted from her small face, replaced by a radiant, gummy smile. Physically, she seemed entirely stable. I couldn't afford to let my guard down, but there appeared to be no immediate crisis.
Ideally, I wanted to drag a priest or a high-tier restoration mage out here to give her a thorough medical evaluation, but given my demonic physiology, whether any holy man would cooperate without screaming for a crusade was a whole other—wait, what is that?
...They're red?
I froze, staring into her wide, innocent face.
Her eyes were bright crimson.
I knew for a fact... her eyes had been pitch-black when I found her.
Uh... um...
Fuck.
Where the hell is a priest?!
This feeling...
Martino had nearly completed his circuit of the city and was turning back toward the grand cathedral when a foul, deeply unsettling vibration prickled against his senses from the direction of the slums.
In the past, he might have overlooked it as mundane filth and marched on. But after examining dozens upon dozens of tormented patients over the past month, his spiritual instincts had been sharpened to a razor's edge. This presence bore an uncanny, bone-chilling resemblance to the faint traces lingering over those sickened souls.
"Father? That way leads to the slums! Please, turn back!"
"I am not deaf, boy. I know where I am walking."
Martino waved an irritated hand. Noisy little brat. Clearly, he can't feel a thing.
He paused at the edge of the squalor, peering into the narrow, muddy alleys. It had been quite some time since he last set foot in the slums, yet nothing had changed in the slightest. Then again, if a slum ever changed, it would cease to be a slum; it was the inevitable reservoir where the dregs and the destitute collected at the end of their rope.
"F-Father Martino..." the acolyte stammered, clutching his robes.
"Even the wretches here possess eyes and a modicum of sense," Martino remarked coolly. "They know full well the retribution that would follow should a holy man be harmed. Do you truly believe they would dare touch me?"
Besides, they had no reason to. His charitable clinics had provided free medical aid to these beggars for years; they owed him too much to bite the hand that fed them. Tsk. Blind to spiritual currents and ignorant of basic human nature... this boy will never rise through the clerical hierarchy.
Ignoring his trembling shadow, Martino followed the faint spiritual residue winding through the mud. A few turns later, he halted.
Found it.
Standing before him was the apparent source of the corruption. To the naked eye, it was nothing more than a ruined shack—its exterior walls rotting, caved-in, and utterly desolate. Yet within every splinter of decayed wood and crumbled mortar, Martino could detect a minuscule, structured thread of magic. He was certain that stepping beyond that threshold would reveal a space vastly different from its decrepit facade.
Should I call for reinforcements?
Judging purely by the spatial distortion, the ward felt like an unholy cross between a dark hex and ancient witchcraft. There could be a coven of witches lurking within, or perhaps an abomination of undeath. It was impossible to verify from the street.
If this was a threat he could handle alone, opening the door was the obvious choice. Why dilute the glory of purifying evil by calling in the rest of the parish? On the other hand, if whatever waited inside exceeded his capabilities...
"I am opening it," Martino declared firmly.
If things went south, he could simply turn tail and run. While the nature of the magic was obscure, the absolute volume of mana radiating from the structure was laughably faint. It can't possibly be anything formidable—
The rusted door groaned on its hinges.
"......!"
Martino's breath caught in his throat.
What lay beyond the threshold defied all reason. In stark contrast to the exterior—which looked too wretched even for a haunted ruin—the interior was pristine, opulent, and breathtakingly lavish.
There was no trace of the putrid sewage stench that choked the slums; the air was thick with the rich fragrance of exotic blossoms. The floor gleamed with polished, oiled parquet, and the walls were paneled in seamless, high-grade marble. Every piece of furniture was fashioned from ivory, dense ebony, and filigreed gold, looking as though it belonged in the private chambers of an emperor. By all appearances, this was the residence of an extraordinary sovereign, grand enough to make an imperial prince hesitate before stepping across the rug.
And yet...
"Hrrk...!"
"F-Father?!"
The sweet floral perfume caressed his physical nostrils, but beneath it lay a rancid, suffocating stench that bypassed the flesh entirely to violently desecrate his soul. It was not the organic disgust brought on by human waste; it was an innate, visceral rejection woven into the very fabric of living spirit.
This is... a demon.
A fleshy shudder rippled through the room.
A horrific screech tore through the air.
The instant Martino doubled over to retch, the magnificent flower resting in the massive porcelain urn beside the entrance twisted into a grotesque, pulsating horror. Its delicate petals peeled back, its pistil and stamen opening into a bottomless, cavernous throat lined with rows of serrated, needle-sharp fangs. Moist, unblinking human eyes erupted across the petals. The slender green stem swelled into a thick, blood-red tentacle covered in weeping tumors.
"Guh?!"
A sickening crunch echoed through the foyer.
Martino threw himself backward, oblivious to the vomit splattering his pristine vestments, just as the monstrous blossom whipped forward and snatched the young acolyte beside him. The priest reached out in a desperate bid to save the boy, but the moment the jaws clamped shut, it was already over. The acolyte's skull was pulverized instantly.
The horror tilted its crowned head toward the ceiling, the boy's limp torso dangling from its maw. With a sickening, rhythmic pulse, its petals folded inward like hydraulic vices, systematically crushing bone and liquefying flesh until the mangled remains were ground into a narrow strip of meat and swallowed whole down its writhing gullet.
"F-Flee... must call for help..."
A heavy thud slammed shut behind him.
Martino froze, his blood turning to ice. While the plant beast had been preoccupied with its meal, he had attempted to scramble back out into the alley—yet the door had shut with a hollow finality, and he now stood squarely in the center of the lavish parlor. He had never taken a single step forward across the threshold.
It was as though the house itself had leaned out and swallowed him whole.
W-What in God's name... what is happening—
"...What is this?"
Martino choked on his own breath.
An interior door swung silently open. The air in the room grew instantly heavy, vibrating with an oppressive, suffocating density as an entity that had no right to exist in the realm of mortals stepped into the light.
A demon.
Its skin was the dreadful, bloodless pallor of a drowned corpse, while its crimson-stained armor and horns evoked the very essence of human agony and butchery.
O God... merciful God, protect me...