Dead Weight (2)
In the end, Seona was seized by the stranger's hand.
Clutching him tight, the assailant called out to Mina, the commander of the expedition.
"Drop your weapons and surrender! Or this boy's head hits the ground!"
No one was fool enough to throw down their arms at those words.
No one, that is, except Mina — a mother who lived for her son.
The enemy commander saw the expedition leader discard her weapon, yet sensed no true surrender from the rest. Even so, watching Mina cast her arms aside was enough. She had felt, firsthand, just how precious this boy was.
The underlings still holding weapons were meaningless now. The fifteen knights she had sent earlier were surely already dead by that woman's hand. Of the seven who had broken through the fighting ranks with her toward the hostage, four were gone. That leader — the one who had cut down fifteen so much faster than expected — must have dealt with those four as well. The woman had been near the point where they charged; it had to be her.
Of the thirty Royal Knights, only three remained.
Considering their skill, it was almost absurd. They were the Demon Realm's absolute elite. The Royal Knights kept their numbers to a mere five hundred, selecting solely by ability, and every year evaluations stripped many of the rank. A single lasting injury was enough to end a career. They were the elite of the elite.
Thirty Royal Knights could have erased a territory of this size overnight. And yet there was no end in sight to that human woman's power. The gulf was something she had never felt before, and it filled her with dread.
Even with a hostage in hand, the commander understood: the instant that hostage's life slipped away, their own lives would vanish with it. Threats would not be enough. She needed to negotiate.
The orders on the writ had been clear — bring the leader to the interrogation chamber. The other humans were unnecessary. All that mattered was abducting the leader so the truth of this incident could be uncovered.
"Any humans who flee to the Gate will be left alone! Only the leader of this group — step forward! Let us negotiate!"
She forced the tremor from her voice and shouted, driving back the fear.
The leader stepped out before her.
Those cold eyes — and the true nature of the power coiled inside that body — nearly made the commander faint on the spot. More mana than even the First Elder of the Council who had issued her orders was roaring through that frame. Its purity alone easily surpassed anything royal. It was almost like the Demon King herself.
"If you value this hostage's life, then only you need surrender. Submit quietly to binding! This is an enforcement under the laws of the Demon Realm!"
Her only path to survival was still this hostage.
"Mom! No!"
The boy in her grip thrashed and cried out against it. The commander was terrified. One mistake — killing him, or letting him go — and that day would be the day of her own funeral rites.
"Seona... it's all right. Mom will get you out of this. I promise."
The human leader smiled toward her family and calmly offered herself to the bindings.
Still, they could not afford to lower their guard. Even bound, she might strike during transport. Whether these ropes — layered with dozens of mana-sealing spells — would even hold was doubtful. So the three remaining knights, the commander among them, would have to manage the hostage and escort her themselves.
A month and a half to the capital of the Demon Realm, where the Council sat. Whether their nerves would last that long was another question entirely.
In the end, the Royal Knights sent the humans back through the Gate.
That a succubus lord could have failed to notice a being of this caliber entering her own territory defied belief — but there was no time to investigate. What remained was to take the leader and the boy presumed to be her family, load them into a carriage, and head for the Council.
Three people watching over a presence this overwhelming was no easy task. In the blink of an eye she might slip those bonds and drive a bare fist into one of them — and a single punch could turn a body into shredded meat. Even while they traveled, even when they slept, the mana that leaked in thin threads from that woman's body sometimes made them wet themselves.
One week left until they reached the royal capital.
Then one of her comrades began to do something insane.
Had terror finally cracked her mind? She had been told to manage the boy they held hostage — and instead she was fondling his genitals, running her hands over his whole body. Years without ever holding a man, desire detonating under pressure, fear only feeding the lust until it swelled past reason. The woman had always been the type to visit a brothel once a day, but to see her chasing release even in a crisis this desperate meant the commander had to step in herself.
"Stop! We have orders to carry out. Do not provoke the hostage recklessly."
"But look at this... Soft and cute — don't you just want to tease him a little? And down here, he looks pretty sturdy too."
With that, her comrade roughly seized the boy's manhood and kneaded it.
She had truly lost her mind. The leader woman was staring this way with bloodshot eyes, startled by the sounds of her family being molested — and still the subordinate was lost in the boy. That was all the commander could think.
"Hic... Mom... I'm okay..."
At the boy's sobbing, the leader ground her teeth and fixed them with a razor-sharp glare. Those keen eyes — so like the boy's — poured over them, and the fear was crushing. The commander wanted nothing more than to kill her deranged comrade on the spot, but with only three of them rotating shifts to hold the hostages, she could not. The week remaining until arrival was going to be agony.
Upon reaching the Council's interrogation chambers, they locked the two prisoners in separate rooms facing each other. The woman's cell completely suppressed mana; only then could they finally breathe.
Afterward, the commander sought out the First Elder to report the completion of orders and the losses in personnel. Today, as always, the First Elder was buried in stacks of documents. The commander briefly relayed that the contents of the writ had been fulfilled, along with a summary of the woman's particulars — the overwhelming mana that had made a direct confrontation impossible, the boy taken as a hostage to bring her in, and the casualties that followed.
Losses bordering on annihilation. The First Elder looked as though she could scarcely believe it, and said she would confirm it herself.
Seona looked at Mina, captured because of him, and his eyes filled with tears.
He had thought they had finally found each other again. He had never imagined he would be dragged into something this terrifying once more. He had believed that once they returned to Earth, nothing remained but happy days with his parents. That he would forget Yurin and Miel, meet a proper woman, introduce her to his mother and father, marry, have children, and live an ordinary life.
But this situation existed because of him.
"Mom... I'm sorry. Because of me..."
Seona apologized to his mother.
"No, Seona... It's enough that my boy isn't hurt..."
Mina was anxious herself, but she hid it, soothing him for the sake of her fragile son's heart. Even so, the guilt over the trouble he had caused and the worry for his parents seemed never to leave Seona for a moment.
"This mother of yours will get you out. Don't worry too much... Seona..."
Mina had always known her son was a child full of worry and consideration for others.
Then the sound of footsteps descending cold, hard stone stairs filled the underground. Someone was entering the dungeon where they had been dragged — two sets of footsteps. One belonged to the monster commander who had imprisoned them; the other was a face they had never seen.
"First Elder. Here."
"Good heavens... The report was accurate. How did you manage to take her alive? I don't doubt your skill, but the gap in class is simply too vast..."
The woman addressed as First Elder had the appearance of someone in her late twenties.
"It is nothing I can claim with a knight's pride, but... by chance, we took this woman's family as a hostage. Then we negotiated and brought her in."
After a brief silence, the knight confessed the truth.
"Not a threat — a negotiation? Fine skill, and a fine sense of humor too!"
In high spirits, the First Elder made a joke.
The utility of these prisoners looked extraordinarily high. Even the boy — something the knight seemed not to have noticed — held high-purity mana slowly accumulating within him. Useful as a test subject, and with looks like his, valuable no matter how one chose to use him.
And when she examined the woman, the First Elder felt a problem that had long tormented her, scrambling her thoughts, rise again to the surface.
She had found a vessel fit for the Demon King.
A woman's body. High-purity mana. A vast reservoir of power. A vessel capable of holding the Demon King's soul.
At last, she had found it.
Under the greedy gaze of that demon, Seona and Mina could only flinch and tremble. As if they could already guess the fate awaiting them, nothing remained in their hearts but worry for each other.