Chapter 210 — Life Is Cruel (5)
The Inquisitor lowered her head in guilt as she watched him leave without a moment’s hesitation.
It was guilt over sending him alone to the most dangerous place when she could not even help him.
Perhaps it was the feeling that she had pushed him into a deathtrap despite knowing that he did not take care of himself. Or perhaps it was because her instincts, in particular, kept filling her with unease.
“Focus.”
Slash!
In the middle of that, the slippery fellow, who had been alternating between stabbing with a spear and shooting a bow, spoke up.
Apparently it was obvious that she was having considerable difficulty concentrating on the battle.
“…Understood.”
“And there was no helping it this time. So don’t take it too much to heart.”
“……!”
Did that guy actually have mind-reading powers or something?
Or was she simply that easy to read?
Still uncertain which it was, the Inquisitor released Divine Power.
The creatures clinging to the wall were pushed away in a long sweep.
The enemy approaching from afar looked overwhelmingly powerful, so she could not afford to overexert herself… but neither could she simply sit around doing nothing.
“Do you truly think so?”
Even so, doubt remained, so she asked in search of reassurance.
Deathbringer answered with a dry expression.
“That’s just the reality of it. The enemy didn’t appear in only that one place, and it’s not like you’re a fast runner.”
“The Demon Knight rode there this time too……”
“More importantly, the Demon Knight isn’t suited to this position.”
Right.
This was not a matter of the Demon Knight absolutely needing to go there.
Rather, the Inquisitor absolutely had to remain here, so the Demon Knight—the one who could leave—had gone instead.
Unlike her, who swallowed hard as he continued speaking, Deathbringer reached his conclusion with complete indifference.
“Why……?”
“If you had to choose someone better at covering a wide area, that would be you. And in a battlefield where you have to fight alongside a huge number of people, you’re also the one whose combat power doesn’t fall off.”
The Inquisitor was also the one with greater endurance in prolonged combat, fewer restrictions regardless of the battlefield, and the ability to drastically reduce casualties by strengthening and healing others.
“I don’t know what the demon that appeared behind us is, but the amount of damage you can prevent by staying here and fighting will probably be greater than what you could prevent by going there. Well, if it turns out we have to kill that gigantic thing, then maybe that’s another matter…… Who knows? Maybe it’s something we don’t even need to kill. Though the odds of that are extremely low.”
Emotion surged across the Inquisitor’s face.
Of course, separate from the unavoidable reality of the situation, her guilt still remained.
“I see…….”
“And even if you hadn’t recommended him, he’s the kind of man who would’ve gone anyway. Just let it go.”
“Even so, I… find it unbearably sorrowful that the most I can ever do for him is send him onto another battlefield.”
She formed an enormous golden barrier and slammed it directly across the sea in front of the wall.
The demons that had been leaping upward were forcibly driven beneath the water, and quite a few died in the process—impaled on spikes or roasted by magic that struck them without obstruction.
“I feel the same way.”
Even so, the waves only grew more violent, as though they intended to spill over the wall itself.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
“……!”
“You’d forget your head too if your shoulders and neck weren’t there to keep it attached, wouldn’t you? You’re really going to leave the weapon I went to all the trouble of providing you sitting around without even maintaining it?”
A noise even louder than the magical items they had been using until now thundered across the battlefield.
Clatter-rattle-rattle.
The metallic sound of something rotating was bizarrely distinctive.
It came from a mass of metal with a long cylindrical body.
“What? Never seen physical magic before?”
And standing on top of it, picking a fight as casually as though pouring water, was a person.
Click.
After removing something with their teeth, the person tossed a round object and swept their hair back.
Then came an upright middle finger.
Hissssss!
“Die, you fish bastards.”
The merman struck by the round object melted on the spot.
“…….”
“…….”
…Wasn’t that, as far as they knew, an item that even high-ranking soldiers only used rarely and with extreme caution?
They had heard that if the contents touched the body, the skin would melt, so soldiers handled it with extraordinary care when throwing it.
They certainly did not use it that roughly.
An awkward silence fell between the Inquisitor and Deathbringer at the utterly unexpected sight.
* * *
BOOM!
The escort guarding Blue Coral widened their eyes at the figure who had suddenly intervened.
“You are……!”
Although the escort’s mouth instinctively demanded the stranger’s identity, their hands hurried to retrieve the fallen Blue Coral.
Blue Coral was somewhat tall but so thin he looked like a stick, and the escort lifted him into both arms.
“Go.”
Meanwhile, the newcomer’s single earring jingled.
Her disheveled, loose hair was the color of faded gold.
“I have no intention of fighting while protecting you.”
“…I don’t know who you are, but a demon is performing a ritual inside. It must be stopped. Please.”
“All right.”
She drew in a deep breath and let it out.
Then she retightened the bandages wrapped around her hands and arms, meant either to prevent needless injuries or to keep her grip from slipping.
“That clothing will not tear or burn! Keep that in mind as well……!”
The additional information helped determine how she should fight from here on.
She raised an eyebrow at the thought of such peculiar clothing.
It was probably some unusual item like the clothes the Demon Knight wore.
BOOM!
“Who the hell are you now?”
Meanwhile, the secretary shoved aside the debris of the collapsed building and returned to her original position.
Judging by the several additional holes visible in the space behind her, that single blow had sent her flying quite a distance.
Chunks of stone collapsed in the direction they had been pushed.
“A barbarian from the north?”
Hmm.
That was precisely why she had avoided wearing this until now—she hated hearing that sort of thing.
Yet somehow she had heard it immediately after putting it on.
She rolled her neck from side to side.
It hardly mattered.
“For now, I think ‘the hunter who’s going to kill you’ will do.”
“Will it? A long tongue alone will get you nowhere in this land.”
Her foot dragged across the ground as she settled into position.
The thick fabric fluttered once, and then, with a BOOM, she disappeared.
Pop-pop-pop.
More signal flares decorated the sky one after another.
Then, with another explosive boom, she vanished again.
Whoosh!
A moment later, she suddenly appeared directly along the route toward the secretary.
The thick cloth draped around her body snapped in the wind.
The secretary wasn’t completely unable to react.
A quarter beat too late, she swung one hand.
The gigantic hand tore heavily through the air as it descended, an awe-inspiring sight.
Tap.
But none of that meant anything if it failed to hit.
Timing it perfectly, she kicked off the ground, vaulted over the hand, and planted one foot on the secretary’s shoulder.
Then she drove her heel into the back of the secretary’s neck.
She had been told the clothing would neither tear nor burn, but she still needed to know whether that protection extended to physical impact as well.
“Ghk!”
The secretary hurriedly reached back with her other hand to guard.
The clothes showed no damage whatsoever, but the secretary did stagger forward from the blow.
So pushing and pulling force still got through.
She organized her approach for the fight ahead.
Since she was fighting barehanded anyway, it would be better to focus on strikes and joint locks rather than attacks meant to cut or tear.
Read only on MUGEX
She jumped down to the far side, then turned without so much as a moment to catch her breath and drove into the secretary’s inside range.
With hands that enormous, it would be difficult to respond once someone got close enough to touch her skin.
That was what she was exploiting.
The secretary’s hawk-sharp eyes twisted, and she swung an arm as though trying to shake her off.
Despite her size, the woman flattened herself remarkably low and sprang upward the moment the arm passed, almost as though taking flight.
THUD!
Her knee buried itself squarely in the secretary’s solar plexus.
It worked, just as expected.
The reaction was less pronounced than it would have been in an ordinary person, but the secretary’s face unmistakably showed pain.
Now certain, she moved on to her fist.
She let her index-finger knuckle protrude slightly, shaping the fist so that the impact would be concentrated into a sharper point.
But when she struck the hollow between the collarbones, the throat, and the nose, something other than the heavy sensation of impact met her hand.
A barrier had formed over the secretary’s face for an instant.
Apparently there was some condition attached to it, however, because one of the gemstones in the secretary’s ear-cuff earring shattered.
BOOM!
The staggering secretary shrank her enlarged arm, swelled one leg instead, and slammed it into the ground.
The edge of the canal collapsed as Demonic Energy burst forward.
This was a technique the Demon Knight used from time to time.
Watching thin cuts appear across the surface of her skin, she stepped backward.
Separate from that—what exactly were the activation conditions of that barrier?
How long did it last?
What was the maximum amount it could block?
Was there a direct relationship between its activation and the gemstones in the earring breaking?
Rustle.
The secretary’s foot returned to normal.
Only after touching the earring with her fingers did she realize what had happened, and her expression twisted violently.
“A people who do nothing but fight……!”
Calling her that was nothing more or less than a compliment.
Moving fluidly out of the way of the enormous hand, she flicked a stone from the ground with the tip of her foot.
The stone shot straight toward the secretary’s face.
The secretary slid backward and knocked it away with one hand.
“You……!”
But stopping after only one would have been disappointing.
She launched another five or six stones before placing a hand on the building immediately behind her.
The structure, already partially collapsed from the earlier battle, happened to contain something suitable for use as a weapon.
“……!”
THUD!
A piece of timber that had once served as a pillar and now protruded alone from the pile of rubble swung like a weapon.
Apparently the secretary hadn’t anticipated that.
She narrowed her eyes and blocked it.
CRUNCH!
The wooden pillar shattered in an instant, and the remaining length flew on toward the secretary’s head.
“You little—!”
The secretary blocked that as well.
It was the ordinary instinct of someone who reflexively protected attacks aimed at the head even while wearing protective equipment.
That made things easier.
While the secretary blocked her own vision with her hand, the woman closed the distance and launched a spinning kick.
Her heel struck the secretary’s temple.
Shatter.
Another gemstone in the ear cuff broke.
Apparently, at least for impacts directed at the head, the gemstones took the burden in place of the wearer and shattered once the force exceeded what they could bear.
In any case, there were four left between both sides.
“……!”
There was an enormous difference in combat between an impact being dispersed and an impact being completely nullified.
Knowing that, she retreated without hesitation.
The secretary realized another gemstone had broken and twisted her expression again.
That did not matter.
Like a hunter who had discovered the method of killing her prey, she relentlessly targeted the secretary’s head.
It did not matter whether the opponent noticed what she was doing.
“Aaaaaagh!”
She was targeting the head simply because it was the easiest way to kill someone.
There were plenty of ways to torment a person without killing them.
“You thought protecting only your weak points would be enough?”
For example, she could break the secretary’s fingers, wrench her arms through the joints, or smash a stone into her ankle until the bone was exposed.
After deliberately focusing on the head for a while and making the secretary defend it openly, she disabled other parts of the woman’s body in an instant.
It did not matter even when the secretary swelled her body with Demonic Energy.
From what she had observed, the woman could strengthen only one body part at a time.
Under a restriction like that, she was more than capable of breaking a person’s arms and legs.
Shatter!
The final gemstone broke.
“I… I…….”
THUD!
Her patience broke as well.
She knocked the secretary down in one motion and raised a foot, intending to crush her head.
BOOM!
She would have done exactly that if a red liquid—called “flowing fire” back in her homeland—had not suddenly erupted outward and tried to engulf her.
Instead of confirming the kill, she chose to protect herself for the battle that would follow.
[No, no. We can’t have that.]
Meanwhile, the red liquid that had burst out wrapped around the secretary’s body.
“No……!”
A short scream was followed by the sound of flesh burning away.
The woman’s shriek rang deafeningly through the air.
[You couldn’t even properly serve as a gatekeeper. You do nothing but disappoint me. Well, it doesn’t matter.]
“I-I’m sor…….”
[More importantly, may I kill you? I can, right?]
“N-No……!”
[It doesn’t matter even if you refuse. Now that I’ve been granted permission to use the power of my true body, something as trivial as the penalty from a contract is irrelevant.]
The red liquid completely swallowed the secretary’s body and melted her away.
[Besides, surely you didn’t think I would simply ignore you trying to steal Moby Dick’s pearl. You should know there are some things you simply shouldn’t covet.]
Meanwhile, flames rose from a nearby building where several corpses lay scattered messily across the ground.
It was an inferno consuming the entire structure.
And from the entrance leaked a dense, dark-red mass that looked as though it might harden black at any moment.
It seemed like exactly the sort of thing that red liquid would become once it solidified.
[We meet again.]
Splash.
As though it were not hot at all, a Shaggi unlike any she had ever seen walked across it.
No.
Was it really a Shaggi?
Could something with ears and a tail made of the same yellow-hot molten metal as its clothes truly be called a Shaggi?
Wouldn’t “demon” be more appropriate?
[Are you planning a rematch for revenge?]
Her lips twitched.
Of course, even though its appearance had changed, a single thought was enough for her to recall what it was.
It was the demon from before.
The one she had failed to stop.
The one she had been unable to stop.
“No.”
If she followed her heart, she wanted to agree with the words “rematch for revenge.”
But she was still standing on the boundary.
Between the two shackles of Berserk and Weapon Master.
Still.
“But I am going to fight.”
Therefore, this could not be a battle for revenge.
A true rematch for revenge would only be possible once she cast off both shackles and was left with nothing but the one proper name that was truly hers.
“Even if it isn’t a rematch for revenge, it’s still a fight where we can decide who wins and who loses.”
But that did not mean she would retreat helplessly from this battle.
[You certainly have changed since last time… but it’s still not enough. You’re going to die, you know?]
“Don’t worry. I won’t die.”
Even without revenge, there was still a way for her to win.
“My role is only to buy time.”
Yes.
If the others—who could not possibly have failed to notice the demon’s presence—arrived, then her victory was assured.