Chapter 220 — The World Is (5)
「…They are not people you are responsible for.」
A sobbing voice pleaded with me.
「So please, don’t concern yourself with them. You have no reason to serve any longer. Please…….」
Yes, it was begging.
Desperately pleading with me to turn away.
Wanting nothing but for me to rest, for me to suffer no more.
But…….
* * *
SPLASH!
[KYAAAAAAH!]
On top of the turtle—upon its shell.
Bare hands, limited footing, and ground that never stopped heaving were too many disadvantages to bear, so the Fighter had reluctantly moved the battlefield onto its shell and took a breath.
The corpses piled beneath every step she took had been made solely by her own two hands.
“Whew.”
Hot breath escaped her cracked lips.
Jingle.
The earring hanging from one ear swung violently like a pendulum, giving off the distinct sound of metal.
Grrrrk!
Meanwhile, one of the new enemies added when she changed battlefields lunged at her from behind.
They were creatures born when all manner of insects, sea cucumbers, sea anemones, shellfish, and similar things became demonized.
WHAM!
Of course, most of them vomited up their insides and died if struck hard enough, so there was little need to pay them much attention.
[Come here. Come here!!]
Dududududu.
The ones she truly needed to worry about were these: the Sirens that had been there from the beginning, the demons resembling sea slaters, and the crablike ones.
The danger of the first hardly needed explanation, since they had been demons from the start. The second were a nuisance because palm-sized bugs swarmed all over her body and sucked her blood. The problem with the third was that they were far too hard and impossible to distinguish from the rocks jutting up around them.
So instead of trying to avoid every wound, she chose to surrender what she had to and focus on reducing the enemy’s numbers.
She threw away the common sense that severe blood loss would prevent her from fighting longer.
Fighting within the bounds of common sense was not the specialty of Norda warriors.
SCRATCH!
After dodging only what she absolutely needed to, claw marks were carved into her forearm, while the hand gripping a rock smashed into a Siren’s face.
The demon, similar to a human in that it had a brain inside its skull, staggered for an instant.
She could not let an opening like that pass.
She stepped deeper into the Siren’s embrace.
Doing so blocked the attacks of the other creatures, and her fingers drove into the Siren’s mouth.
Hooking her thumbs into both sides of its mouth, she seized its head, tightened her grip, and pulled in opposite directions.
[AAAAAAAAAGH!!]
The skin of the Siren’s head tore apart in her hands.
The blood spraying from it painted the berserker’s body yet again.
WHAM!
Then, relying on her innate monstrous strength, she grabbed the half-dead Siren and swung it around.
Its wing scraped across the ground and swept away the mutated sea slaters, while its torso smashed into another creature that had been hovering indecisively nearby.
The two Sirens fell together in perfect harmony.
“Is that all you’ve got, birdbrains!!”
But the enemies were still numerous, and she needed more blood.
She roughly swept away the sea slaters crawling up her body, then jumped straight off the ground so they would have no time to climb onto her again.
Scrrrk.
Just as she was about to land, a crab pretending to be a rock abruptly rose with a crackle and spread its pincers wide.
The pincers alone were large enough to seize a human, so she did not dismiss them.
One bad grab and her waist could easily be snapped in two.
Tap!
So with a light step, she planted a foot on the pincer and jumped again.
The pincer snapped shut half a beat too late.
THUD.
Her body landed on the shell of the crab that had dared try to catch her.
CRRRRACK!
With the handicap of being barehanded, she could not pierce its shell to attack.
But did that mean she had to simply let the enemy go?
Not at all.
Just as she had targeted the soft inside of the Siren’s mouth, she seized one of the protruding eyeballs and ripped it straight out.
The crab demon thrashed its pincers in agony, but no amount of struggling would put an already-plucked eye back in its socket.
Having done the bare minimum she needed, she moved toward another enemy.
A sea-cucumber monster vomited something at her.
The bright-yellow liquid melted flesh into a sizzling slurry with even the slightest touch.
But something like that could be dodged.
She twisted acrobatically through the air, avoided the vomit, landed, and kicked at a razor clam erupting from the ground.
Its thin shell shattered, and the plump flesh inside split vertically down the middle and bared its teeth.
The two halves of the razor clam’s body plunged toward her position like tentacles.
[Come with me. Come with me!]
At that moment, a Siren folded its wings and dove toward her.
Apparently it had no desire to smash itself into a shell that was little different from solid rock, because its wings spread enormously just before impact.
“Ha!”
But what good was such a fine dive when its talons failed to catch her?
She kicked off the ground, passed over the Siren’s shoulder, and landed on its back.
Crk.
Her powerful grip seized what served as both its arm and wing.
[UGYAAAAAAAH!!]
With a grotesque crunching sound, the joint finally bent backward.
CRACK!
Add a kick to that, and it was no great feat to make bone burst through skin.
After breaking the Siren’s wing, she kept one foot planted on the fallen demon and completely crushed its head.
Sasasasak.
A sound resembling the wash of waves scraped at her ears.
It was the sound of sea slaters surging toward her like a black tide.
Even though she pulled away quickly, several still managed to cling to her body.
Between the black veins raised like scars by Demonic Contamination, the sea slaters stubbornly latched on and sucked her blood.
CRUSH!
It did not even itch.
Whether their teeth were buried in her skin or not, she brutally tore them away, threw them to the ground, and stomped them flat.
The sea slaters’ guts burst, and blood burst from her skin along with them.
“Come at me!”
[Don’t go…….]
[You mustn’t go…….]
By that point, the ones backing away and trying to preserve themselves were instead the demons—at least, those intelligent enough to think.
Berserk.
One who fought while drenching her entire body in blood, whether her own or another’s, and proved her courage through that very act.
Even demons had become sickened by the madness befitting that name.
Demons might be exceedingly violent, but they were not creatures completely devoid of reason, so in a way, it was only natural.
“Ha!”
But that sight was precisely what she had wanted, and precisely what her name demanded.
In battle, breaking the enemy’s morale was no different from winning half the fight.
“Cowards!”
Instead, she found the demons ridiculous.
She was alone and still rampaging this fiercely, yet they overwhelmingly outnumbered her and were frightened enough to retreat?
Nothing like this had happened even during the intertribal conflict she had fought at seventeen.
Back then, she had still needed to kill fifty warriors by herself, but at least those fifty had not cowered and held back out of fear!
It was only after all fifty were dead that the tribespeople had trembled in terror!
BOOM!
At that moment, the turtle led by the serpent finally hauled its entire body onto land and stopped walking.
When its head rose, violent waves surged in from the sea.
SHHHHAAAAA!
Water climbed over the high ground in an impossible shape and flooded all the land around them, waterways or no waterways.
KYAAAAH!
Grrrrk.
The ones who benefited were the mermen.
Riding in with the seawater, the mermen sprayed acidic liquid in every direction, melting away useless structures, and gathered the human corpses before chopping them into small pieces.
Considering that most of the corpses scattered throughout the area belonged to soldiers or Adventurers who had fought bravely, it was an outrageous insult.
Even she, whose attitude toward the dead was essentially who would know or care once a body was buried beneath the snow, arched an eyebrow at the sight.
PTOOO!
Worse, they gathered the mutilated corpses together and stacked them into towers.
Not just in one place, either, but in several!
Should she go crush those things?
She had no interest in what happened after death, but this seemed to possess neither honor, respect, nor even the barest minimum of decency.
A brief debate passed through her mind.
I’m in favor.
Someone agreed.
THUD!
“—?!”
But when the turtle that had seemed ready to advance forever suddenly sank down, her impulse could not be put into action.
CRRK.
Something emerged from holes between the sections of shell concealed beneath all manner of seaweed and coral.
They were mermen, every one of them with grotesquely swollen bellies.
“……!”
Then those mermen approached the piles of corpses and drove their tails into them.
The way their tails pulsed looked unmistakably like they were laying eggs.
Disgustingly enough, the damned things had not merely intended to drive the humans away.
They also intended to make this land their nest.
And in the corpses of enemies who had fought them to the bitter end!
“…Demons!”
But was she supposed to stand by and watch that?
Even as Demonic Contamination gradually muddled her mind, she still distinguished her target with perfect clarity.
Kill them.
Kill every last one of those things trying to lay eggs.
Her bloodshot, reddened eyes fixed unerringly on the target through a mind swaying as though drunk.
She was not aiming at the ones already outside.
She wanted the ones that had not yet emerged from the holes.
In other words, the damned things still hiding inside the turtle’s shell.
Her body slipped into the shell of the rotting, decaying beast.
Will this become our grave?
“An honor!”
Will our corpses become their nest too?
“Ha!”
Rotten flesh and pooled blood soaked her ankles.
“There’ll be more demons killed by my hands than ever hatch from my body!”
She picked up a stone.
Read only on MUGEX
* * *
Who knows. The Hero he cherishes so much is dying, and you really think he has no reason to intervene? Don’t you agree, Gretchen?
「You!!」
The Hero, innocent civilians, and plenty of others are dying even at this very moment.
「Shut that mouth right n—」
Can you really stay still?
* * *
When had she last felt as though she were burning herself alive?
When she hunted the dragon in the western sea?
When the Demon Knight lost control in front of her?
When she protected the wall?
Or when she made footholds all the way into the sky above the clouds?
Or perhaps now.
She finally created a golden curtain to stop the demons.
She knew perfectly well how severe the strain was, but that was fine.
Everyone else was staking their lives.
It would be unjust for the one bearing the greatest responsibility to refuse to stake hers.
[Good heavens, you dare pay attention to something else when I’m right here? Is that it!?]
With peals of laughter, thunder crashed deafeningly.
BOOM! KABOOM!
Behind her, a volcano she had only ever seen in picture books erupted in real time, hurling volcanic bombs down upon the earth.
The heat penetrating even the protection of her dragon-scale armor was so intense that breathing itself required effort.
It felt as though the inside of her lungs were burning.
[Naive. You’re so naive!]
At that moment, the lava giant brought its arm crashing down.
The giant had lost one arm, but the remaining one was still more than threatening enough.
BOOM!
Still, when it came to running, she had trained very hard during the hunt for Moby Dick.
She sprinted from beneath the descending hand as though the muscles in her legs might tear apart.
By the time it felt as though her lungs had climbed to just beneath her throat, her feet finally escaped the hand’s range.
SPLASH!
The lava crushed beneath the giant’s hand sprayed in every direction as the price.
Her armor, saturated with Divine Power, blocked the immediate heat without difficulty, but no one knew how long that would last.
CLANG!
Then an attack stabbed through the perfect opening.
She somehow blocked it with her large shield.
Slash! Slash, slash!
Perhaps because it had three pairs of arms, three attacks came in succession without even a breath between them.
She had too many places demanding Divine Power and had put less into the shield, so the force coming through it was considerably heavy.
“……!”
But that was not the end of the enemy’s assault.
The ground bulged upward and broke the Inquisitor’s balance.
Behind her were volcanic bombs.
In front was a demon capable of attacking without pause by taking advantage of its many arms.
The Inquisitor fiercely furrowed her brow.
BOOM!
Not every surface had to be flat.
In that sense, pushing away everything in all directions with a spherical burst was something not only the Demon Knight could do, but she could as well.
Compared to his Mana, which unintentionally ground down everything nearby because it was formed from densely packed lines, her Divine Power truly did little more than push things away.
“Hup!”
But she had discovered that fact long ago.
She had also realized that releasing energy in a sphere to shove enemies away did not mean her own body had to remain stationary while she did it.
The Demon Knight had left her countless precedents to learn from.
So the Inquisitor faithfully put what she had learned into practice.
Separate from the force spreading in every direction, she swung her shield.
The demon, pushed back only a single step thanks to its powerful Demonic Energy, was struck hard enough by the shield to make a slicing sound.
The Inquisitor had swung it so that the narrow edge became the point of impact, gouging into its flesh rather than merely bruising it.
[Not bad.]
But the enemy was not so easy either.
In that brief instant, it moved an arm and caught her shield, while another finger extended toward her.
Ding-ding-ding.
The Inquisitor’s instincts rang alarm bells.
BOOM!
“……!”
She rolled aside by the narrowest margin.
Remembering the flash that had nearly pierced straight through her skull, the Inquisitor forced her tingling body to move.
It was proof that lightning had passed through her in that brief instant.
The places where she had only roughly coated herself in Divine Power were sizzling as lava slipped through gaps in her armor during the roll and cooked her flesh.
[But you’re still clumsy.]
The Inquisitor restored only her nerves and muscles before standing, leaving the burns on her skin untreated.
SHNK.
“……!”
Spikes erupting from the ground pierced her thigh.
“Ghk!”
There were no words for the pain of flesh being punctured and muscle cooking from within.
But by God’s blessing, the Inquisitor was one of the people in the world most accustomed to burning pain.
She could endure this much.
She forcibly pulled her leg free and pushed forward.
It was truly fortunate that lava vanished when touched by Divine Power.
The speed at which the demon’s spikes grew was soon overtaken by the speed at which she erased them, restored her flesh, and advanced.
RUMBLE!
Just as she overcame that trial, a spiked ball came rolling violently from diagonally ahead.
BOOM!
The spiked ball collided with her large shield and ground against it.
SHNK!
The damned spikes kept erupting from everywhere she stepped.
Splash, splash.
Human-shaped figures rising from the lava were an added bonus.
Every direction was the enemy itself.
WHAM!
The first thing the Inquisitor targeted among them was a lava creature.
She twisted at the waist and struck the one behind her.
Its head burst beneath the mace, and the lava creature scattered apart.
She had destroyed the core of Demonic Energy, so unless another one was created, it would not rise again.
Then she shattered the spiked ball with brute force, removed the spikes, and moved once more.
How on earth had the Demon Knight fought against this?
He had neither a shield nor the power to purify lava.
The thought of how much he must have struggled made sorrow rise within her.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
But her own vessel was already filled with more than enough hardship and adversity without worrying about someone else’s.
The Inquisitor did everything she could to endure the endless attacks.
Perhaps because she was not an agile fighter, most of her response consisted of purifying, blocking, and healing through Divine Power.
[How pathetic.]
The problem was this.
Roughly two-thirds of the Divine Power she could currently use had been allocated to that curtain.
The Inquisitor was driven into a corner in an instant.
[What can you possibly accomplish when you agonize like this, unable to choose one thing or the other? God’s power cannot be infinite, and there must also be a limit to how much power you can draw upon at once.]
She could not deny it.
The more of God’s power she used, the greater the amount of Divine Power her body could endure became, but neither side was infinite yet.
There was a limit to how much Divine Power the vessel called her could contain at once, and the amount of power that could refill that vessel each time it emptied would also eventually run out—more precisely, it would end with the vessel itself breaking apart.
And yet she had reduced the power available to her to one-third simply to maintain that curtain…….
In truth, there was very little she could do.
With only one-third of her strength, there was a high probability that merely enduring against a Great Demon was the best she could manage, let alone killing one.
“You’re right.”
But this body and soul had been bestowed upon her to be used exactly this way from the beginning.
So what if she used them that way?
“But that is my mission.”
[You have no understanding of efficiency. You are worth more than those humans.]
“I have heard such things many times. But they are not people who resolved themselves to be sacrificed, nor are they people who told me they would buy time while I went to do my duty.”
Save the greater number.
Human lives could not be assigned value, so if nothing else, count the visible numbers and decide that way.
Someone in the Temple had once said that, and she had acknowledged that it was “efficient.”
But…….
“And the scripture I read said not to abandon such people.”
God had never called that “right.”
Nor had she ever thought of it as “the right thing to do.”
Then, if God’s judgment and hers agreed, was it not her duty to follow it gladly?
“And who said there was nothing I could do?”
[…Ha!]
“I will defeat you. I will destroy you without fail! That is what I must do!”
WHAM!
Another approaching lava creature died, and the spiked ball and firebombs shattered apart.
Her entire body, burned by lava and fried by lightning, shed ragged scraps each time it was wounded and grew new flesh beneath them.
“I will defeat you. I will destroy you without fail! That is what I must do!”
[…Ha!]
Her once-blackened body shone pure white again.
“By the authority of the Inquisitor, I hereby carry out the execution of a heretic!”
In response, the Divine Power that had seemed on the verge of fading swelled a little further.
Even that would still be hopelessly insufficient to reverse the situation.
[Fine. The more foolishly you act, the more it benefits me, so it’s hardly my problem.]
And the opponent the Inquisitor faced was a demon with so little concern for pride that the moment it was wounded in close combat, it shifted the battle back to long range.
[Since things have come this far, shall we make a wager?]
“……?!”
[The terms are simple. The moment you lower that curtain, your companion dies!]
Lava surged upward behind Pandemonium, then immediately flowed cleanly away.
What remained was a round cocoon shaped like an egg.
[Won’t that be fun!]
Crack.
The cocoon split open, revealing someone whose entire body had been encased and bound in stone.
At last learning the whereabouts of the Demon Knight she had been so desperate to find, the Inquisitor’s eyes flew wide open.
* * *
…Yeah.
I guess… I really can’t stay still after all.
* * *
Crk.
Someone’s finger twitched without anyone noticing.