The Angel Must Die (1)
“This can’t be… This can��t be happening……”
The human realm is an uncomfortable place to live.
There are hardly any refreshing mountains, no proper wheeled vehicles worth a damn, so you’re stuck relying on carts pulled by horses or donkeys. The soldiers can’t even fire a single shot properly, so every firearms demonstration makes me scowl. But the absolute worst part is…
“Yeah. This definitely can’t be right. What kind of piss-water are they trying to pass off as beer?”
Exactly. Places that serve decent beer are rare. This yellow garbage looks like someone took baby piss and blew bubbles into it. Still, it’s the only option.
“That’s not what I meant, Sir Kadros!”
And then there’s the whining saint on top of it all.
I deliberately slammed the crude wooden mug—leaky as it looked—down on the table with a loud clack. Bubbles foamed up angrily from the shocked liquid.
“How can you drink at a time like this? Kaira… Kaira is…”
That’s right.
The two of us, with our bases nearly at opposite ends of the vast empire—one in the northeast, one in the southwest—had only come to this human-infested imperial capital because the emperor himself had summoned us.
They call us heroes with all that glittering pomp, but the real reason they dragged in people like us, who do nothing but undermine imperial authority, was written on this pathetic little scrap of paper. I read the empire’s language in a surly tone.
Imperial Decree
Subjugation of the Shadow Witch Kaira
“Hah. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
I crumpled the paper and hurled it away. That girl had been clumsy but adorable, and above all, her heart had been in the right place. For her to end up like this… it was simply unimaginable.
Which was exactly why I was sitting here drinking.
I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes yet, but they said Kaira had been drenched in a darkness so deep and pure that the Demon King’s magic looked like a joke in comparison. Every village she and that little angel who followed her had passed through had been reduced to shadow-choked wastelands.
In the wake of Kaira’s passage, you couldn’t find any trace of the living—nor even the dead.
The priests of the God of Death had apparently tried to search the villages she swept through, offering prayers for the departed and hoping to turn the corpses into some kind of consumable army. But the land had been so horribly twisted that it had become shadow itself. Even gathering bodies or souls was impossible.
It didn’t seem like she was deliberately trying to exterminate every intelligent being the way the Demon King had. No, she had become something like a natural disaster without purpose or will, simply wandering and turning the southern empire into barren land shrouded in eternal gloom. Somehow, that was even more horrifying than the Demon King.
The pointy-eared bastard and the big oaf hadn’t answered the summons. The elves never bother with outside problems anyway, so their absence was actually normal. Last time had been the exception.
Truthfully, I understood. Those spineless fools just didn’t want to dirty their own hands by killing their friend. Idiots.
‘Hoo… The real kindness would be helping a child like that pass on and find peace…’
Irritation surged through me. I lifted the mug again and drained it in one go. The squishy creature that looked disturbingly like Kaira—the one claiming to be her daughter—stared at me with anxious eyes.
“So this thing is the messenger that gave you and the emperor information about Kaira?”
Before the saint could answer, the monster in the shape of a girl protested in a crawling voice. She was an artificial lifeform created by a famous imperial alchemist, born by borrowing Kaira’s body, or so they said.
“I’m not ‘this thing.’ My name is Rin……”
“Call yourself whatever you like. But unlike the saint here, I only have weapons that use physical force, kid. Can this axe and rifle really take down Kaira? Or will I get swallowed by the shadows too and crumble away like those sucked-dry corpses?”
The slime girl still looked terrified, but she explained clearly.
“Even though Mom has become a monster with shadow tentacles waving from her entire body… she is still borrowing a human vessel. If that vessel is destroyed, we believe we can banish the terrible something that lies beyond her from this world. That existence seems to treasure Mom’s body as its container very dearly.”
“Even so, it’ll still be hard to cut her with an axe or blade, won’t it?”
“That’s why I’m here instead of the other heroes, bearded uncle.”
The tiny monster child stared straight at me. She was even smaller than I was—about the size of a human child. I knew full well that her expression and eyes were merely mimicked by altering the color and transparency of sticky mucus, yet those eyes seemed to shine with both resolve and sorrow.
“The fact that the entity has taken root in Mom’s flesh means it follows the laws of living things to some degree. So I will infiltrate Mom’s body and seize control of her brain. I should be able to stop Mom’s movements… perhaps even the shadow tentacles for a short time. That’s when you must destroy her physical body.”
The girl-shaped jelly that mimicked humans stretched out her arm. It reached the mug I had set aside for my next drink, snatched it, and brought it to her own mouth. She gulped it down noisily.
“But if you do that… won’t you break too?”
The mug was too big for her small mouth, so more than half the beer spilled, but the liquid that flowed over her body was absorbed straight into her without leaving a trace.
I looked at the bold little monster—no, the bold little girl—who stared straight back at me and spoke in disbelief.
“Cheeky brat. Children shouldn’t be drinking alcohol.”
I felt the saint’s anxious gaze on me as I grumbled. I stroked the girl’s head—soft, moist, and elastic in a way that could never be mistaken for human hair—and continued.
“But fine. I’ll trust you and leave it in your hands, kid. We’ll do it your way. The sixth hero, Rin.”
Damn those other so-called heroes. In the end, they never showed up to help the empire until we were on the verge of confronting Kaira—or rather, whatever Kaira had become.
I gazed at the ashen presence that blackened the distant hill and muttered under my breath. Beneath a sky obscured by what looked like rippling shadows, I could see two silhouettes in the shape of girls and the priests following them.
“That’s her.”
“That… is Kaira…?”
Rin, still mimicking the appearance of a girl who resembled Kaira, quietly interjected.
“No, Saint… That isn’t Mom. It’s just… just the world’s destruction wearing a vague human shape… something like that.”
If we could mobilize the empire’s troops or our own people’s guard, it would have been reassuring, but it wasn’t a good idea. No matter how many soldiers you brought against an existence that spread corruption simply by existing, it would be pointless. Only a small number of warriors armed with powerful weapons or magic could hope to defeat them.
I gripped tightly the axe our people had forged with pride from superalloy. I twisted my body to confirm the rifle was properly slung across my back.
A fear I had never felt in my entire life—not even before the Demon King—rose like lint on cloth. It must have been the revulsion of seeing a former comrade reduced to this. There was also the disgust toward an entity that spread supernatural corruption far beyond anything the Demon King had managed.
I couldn’t afford to dwell on that fear. I had to fight in a way that wouldn’t shame my father’s name—White Hammer Andrak. I trusted in the armor and shield that had passed through the hands of craftsmen, automated production lines, and finally received enchantments from mages.
“Let’s go.”
“You can make up your mind that easily…?”
“What else do you want me to do, Saint? If we don’t kill Kaira, we die. Your precious church will be finished. Our people will be destroyed eventually too. That’s all there is to it.”
The moment I snapped at her, the saint’s slightly furrowed brow ignited in pure white flame. She seemed ready to fight. The incandescent light that burned in opposition to Kaira’s all-encompassing darkness made my helmeted vision blur.
“Haha… Monsters, the lot of you.”
Kaira was a monster. The saint was a monster. Even the slime brat who said she’d help us was a monster. Fine. Damn it all. I, as the representative of a normal race, would clash with them.
“Whoa…!!”
Before I could say another word, the saint charged with a leap that defied imagination. Good grief—she must turn into a battle maniac the second she receives divine power.
I ran after the soaring saint, holding the slime girl’s hand. Rin let out a startled “Eh…?” when I suddenly grabbed her wrist, but she soon entrusted herself to my grip. Her jelly-like body flapped as she followed.
There was no way the Kaira side could have missed Azalea, who shone like the sun itself. The countless shadow tentacles that had been undulating as if to cover the sky surged toward the radiant saint, trying to envelop her.
The light surrounding Azalea swelled. A greatsword as tall as two adult members of my people, blazing with sacred radiance, sliced through the dark tentacles. I had doubted whether something like that could actually be cut, but for her, who basked in the favor of the God of Vengeance, it seemed possible.
From the saint’s slender frame—narrow except for her chest—came sword strikes that were both swift and impossibly heavy, slowly pressing forward. Beneath her, using her light as a shield, I cut down the priests of Kaira who charged at me.
“Die, you trash trying to ruin the world!”
They were called priests, but they were nothing more than armed combatants whose entire bodies had been corrupted by magic, their veins turned gray. They didn’t seem to possess much supernatural power. Cutting down these strong-but-hollow puppets in two or three pieces was my specialty.
“Sir Kadros, p-please don’t get so worked up!”
The slime brat shouted urgently, but I ignored her. With the saint rampaging like that, there was no way I could stay calm.
“It’s not Kadros! I am Kadros, son of White Hammer Andrak! Don’t you dare miss a single syllable, you jelly brat!”
The more black blood coated my armor, the deeper I fell into the frenzy that battle gifted me. I swung my axe and shield to my heart’s content. Anyone caught in the axe’s path became a lump of black meat spraying turbid blood. The head of any priest who stood before my shield was crushed into gray paste with a single punch.
“These puppets you made by seducing humans are useless no matter how many cartloads you bring! Show yourself, brat! Let’s meet as old comrades and settle our feelings once and for all!”
“As you wish.”
“……!!!”
A sharp voice rang from the sky—no, it felt like it was whispering directly inside my head. An unforgettable voice. It was Kaira’s voice.
From the shadows that had soaked the earth, countless tentacles burst forth, writhing like the hair of a drowned corpse. They didn’t seem to be attacking me, yet the corrupting energy and malice hidden within them were impossible to measure.
And then, one small girl’s head emerged… no, two. As naturally as a submerged person rising from water, the silhouettes of two girls rose from the shadow where only solid ground should have been.
“Ugh…!!”
The face of Kaira, smiling brightly, was as beautiful as when I had last seen her. Yet the gray veins tangled like a web across her bloodless, achromatic skin gave her an equal measure of grotesqueness to match that beauty.
Our eyes met. The ruby-red eyes that had suited her slightly eerie crimson gaze were gone. There was only pitch-black darkness soaked in shadow.
Beside her stood a girl who looked slightly smaller than Kaira yet eerily similar—her face blank and dazed, in stark contrast to the one smiling with feigned delight.
Both girls wore no clothes at all. Nearly everywhere except their faces, their skin had burst open in hideous, torn wounds. Shadow tentacles sprouted from those scars and fluttered like heat haze.
Their bellies bulged like those of women in the final month of pregnancy, writhing ceaselessly. It was as if the source of all those countless tentacles lay within their wombs. I doubted whether anything resembling internal organs even remained inside bodies that no longer seemed to belong to this world.
Disgust surged at the sight—a mockery of the human form itself.
“K-Kaira……”
The saint, who had been slicing through tentacles high in the sky, was now beside me. Saint Azalea covered her mouth with both hands and trembled as though she had witnessed something unbearable.
Toward us, Kaira lightly grasped one of the writhing tentacles at her waist as if lifting a skirt hem and gave a small curtsy.
“It has been a long time, Sir Kadros, son of White Hammer Andrak, and Saint Azalea. Ah, allow me to introduce someone infinitely precious to me. This is my mother, Pirel.”