287

Chapter 287 — Something I Can Accept (3)

“Sir, go take the White Jade Knight’s position, quickly!”

“Yes……!”

“And you! From now on, you’re the Centurion! Take command!”

“Yes!”

Gunter hurriedly began choosing people to replace the dead commanders.

Thank goodness he had heard things about the soldiers during ordinary times. Several people who were unlikely to get fragged and who were competent immediately came to mind, making them suitable candidates for temporary promotion.

“Our objective is to hold out! We only need to endure until reinforcements arrive from the other cities! Understood?!”

Even while selecting people, he continued shouting encouragement at the top of his lungs.

His throat was horribly dry, and his starving stomach hurt as though it were being wrung out, but he endured it stubbornly.

There was no one else here who could replace him.

“M-My throat…….”

“I’m hungry…….”

“Your thirst and hunger are nothing more than illusions! Illusions that will disappear once that beast leaves! Endure! You can overcome this!”

There was no one.

No one but him could do it.

“You can overcome—!”

For a moment, as his voice grew louder in inverse proportion to morale, he wondered.

Was this the right thing to say?

Was this actually helping?

Was this—

this—

what he was doing—

『I cannot believe that someone like you is the best among the candidates for succession.』

…Can I really do this?

“…We can overcome this!!”

He clenched his trembling hand tightly into a fist.

The duty suddenly handed down to him was so unbearably heavy that he couldn’t stand there with his hand open.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t drop your weapons! Hold them properly!”

“We can win!”

Fucking old bastard.

If you were going to bitch about being disappointed in me, then you shouldn’t have died.

Why the hell did you go and die by yourself?

You spent every damn day telling me someone like me would never do—

so why were you the first one to die?

When you were so much better than me.

Than someone like me.

“We have nowhere behind us to retreat! If we die, we die here! Take up your weapons for your families, your friends, and the people you love!”

He barely forced his crushed shoulders upright and straightened his back all the more because he was terrified.

“Ah!”

Suddenly, something close to a scream of surprise burst from one side.

It was the area where the traitor had been confronting the soldiers.

“What is it?!”

Did Topaz get taken down by the traitor?

An ominous feeling seized him, and Gunter broke off in the middle of issuing orders to run over.

If even Topaz fell, they would have no one left capable of dealing with the traitor.

He had no choice.

Should he call Sapphire back even now?

Or pull away a couple of other knights?

But if he removed them now, then who would command……

Gunter’s thoughts tangled together, and finally the section of wall where the traitor had been came into view.

“What the……”

Only Topaz was there.

“Sir, what happened?!”

“Th-That is……”

Sir Topaz’s lips trembled before a finger pointed beyond the wall.

“They fell. Th-The unidentified young man and the traitor, together.”

“…What?”

He rushed to the battlement.

The army of demons had drawn much closer while he had been assigning personnel, and below the wall he could see the two figures who had fallen.

Despite plummeting dozens of meters, they were crossing blades as though neither had taken the slightest damage.

The fluttering brown hair filled him with a painfully intense nostalgia.

“Young Lord, that person……”

Someone approached him then.

It was a face the Young Lord could not possibly fail to recognize.

“Bishop?”

Even knowing that every minute and every second was worth its weight in gold, the bishop bit their lip once, then again.

The narrowed eyes held a chaotic mixture of contempt, confusion, and more.

“That brown-haired man… contains Demonic Energy comparable to the Beast of Pestilence. Perhaps even greater.”

At last, the bishop spoke.

“What?”

“I ordered the priests to keep silent, because spreading that fact would likely do nothing but lower morale. However… you must remain wary.”

“What are you……”

The bishop glanced toward the advancing demons, then quietly spoke close to his ear.

While running toward this location after detecting Demonic Energy erupting from inside the city, the bishop had witnessed Emerald’s betrayal.

After seeing the owner of that Demonic Energy opposing the traitor, rather than treating the brown-haired man as an enemy, the bishop had first ordered the priests to keep quiet.

That was the gist of it.

“…For now, I understand. You have my gratitude for your wisdom, Bishop.”

“I merely did what had to be done. We will prepare for any possibility.”

“I leave it to you.”

At the new weight added to his shoulders, he barely suppressed the urge to scream.

Demonic Energy equal to—or greater than—the Beast of Pestilence.

Didn’t that ultimately mean the brown-haired man was a Great Demon?

“Y-Young Lord.”

“…Topaz, you remain silent as well.”

As if his head weren’t already aching enough, another variable had just been added.

The only consolation was that, “for now,” this variable was working in their favor.

“…The senior knight who murdered the Lord and poisoned knights, inflicting tremendous damage upon the city, gives off not so much as a speck of Demonic Energy, while the person who appears to be a Great Demon is fighting for our city. The world truly does work in amusing ways.”

At the absurdity of it all, Gunter slipped his hand beneath his cloak.

His head felt pointlessly dizzy.

“It’s the Amber Knight…….”

“The Amber Knight has returned.”

The nearby soldiers’ words made that dizziness even worse.

“…Goddammit.”

The one fighting outside wasn’t the Amber Knight.

The Amber Knight was dead.

That thing carried Demonic Energy. It was a demon.

Just a demon who happened to resemble the Amber Knight.

“Amber Knight! Please grant Münmund victory!”

“Please grant us salvation!”

But.

But still.

Gunter watched sword clash against sword and prayed quietly.

Even if the Amber Knight had become a demon—

he wished it truly were the Amber Knight who had returned.

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* * *

Clang, clang!

Was it because the area we could move around in had grown wider, and the soldiers were no longer obstacles?

The sound of our sword strikes became even more violent.

CLANG!

Of course, in terms of technique, there was still no room for me to compete.

I was inadequate, while according to what I’d heard, she had never lost a duel against another knight.

“You are not a fool.”

But if I had intended to obsess over that, I wouldn’t have changed the battlefield even at the cost of getting stabbed through the shoulder.

I countered her refined swordsmanship with my own advantage—

an absurd amount of Demonic Energy.

BOOM!

The ground infused with Demonic Energy split and shook, disrupting her sword.

Spears of Demonic Energy emerged from every direction—front, back, left, right—and rushed her in patterns designed to make any choice of movement difficult.

“But you are inexperienced.”

Yet perhaps at a sufficiently high level, it was possible to turn lines into surfaces.

The blade and whip, which had seemed to move slowly, blossomed beautifully, scattering jewel-like light.

If someone had watched from the sky, perhaps an emerald rose would have appeared to bloom.

A fluttering veil.

An aurora.

In an instant, it sliced apart every spear of Demonic Energy and slid along my sword.

The blade, cunning as a snake and graceful as moonlight, deflected my sword along an insidious trajectory and touched my hand.

Slash!

My leather glove tore, leaving a shallow line of blood across the back of my hand.

Slash!

But I had already suffered too many wounds to let that stop me.

Rather than celebrating or despairing over a single scratch, I continued attacking.

Spears plunging from the sky and the trembling earth created a firework display upon the ground.

Black sparks scattered everywhere like ash.

CLANG!

Even then, our swords continued colliding.

The black whip, filled with energy, twisted in grotesque shapes as it tore through the air, and distorted currents shattered my Demonic-Energy spears.

Still, our blades never stopped meeting.

Clang!

A hand coated in Demonic Energy like armored fingers struck aside the rapier’s edge and aimed for the opening it created.

CLANG!

It failed.

She smoothly curved the displaced sword and added acceleration to it, instantly returning the blade.

Rapier and longsword collided and separated once again.

“How pitiful.”

Would I someday be capable of movements like that?

At the end of a technique I had seen yet somehow failed to truly see, her sword drew a circle and engraved a veil of energy.

Crackle.

Several spears I fired straight at her shattered.

Then the ground beneath her feet, ground I had not disturbed, took on a similar shape with a single kick from her.

“To possess Demonic Energy this fierce, and yet be capable of using it only to this extent.”

Rustle.

The whip had somehow drawn close.

It tore and twisted through the space to her left, then bent at a bizarre angle and wrapped tightly around my longsword.

At the same time, the rapier escaped to her right and swept across the spaces beside her, behind her, and above her head.

It struck at the many attacks crashing in from angles she should never have been able to evade.

Clang!

When had our swords even touched again?

I felt our blades tangle—

then felt her weapon twist in an uncanny way until its edge reached my elbow.

Sssk.

A strip of flesh was carved away along with part of my sleeve.

The fragment of shirt fluttering through the air with fresh blood almost looked ridiculous.

“Let me ask you just one thing.”

Ignoring the black arm now exposed to the air, I stamped my foot.

Demonic Energy erupted subtly from my body, freeing my sword while knocking aside the whip swinging in its place.

She looked rather interested.

“Are you one of the Seventy-Two Knights, or are you a Great Demon?”

Her reaction to the question was similar.

She simply stared at me with a face as smooth as porcelain.

There was no killing intent, hostility, or even displeasure in that gaze, yet somehow it still felt oppressive.

CLANG!

Our swords collided again.

Without the barrage of Demonic-Energy spears and with nothing but sword against sword, the wounds around my elbow multiplied almost instantly.

“I am not defined by such words.”

What an elegant way to say she was neither.

While pushing her sword away and firing more spears, I tried to infer what she actually was.

If she wasn’t a Great Demon and wasn’t one of their lackeys, then what the hell was she?

“Then a Demon Worshipper?”

Slice.

With a wrist movement that looked almost like a work of art, she rotated her sword and erased the incoming spear.

“Foolish human. Is that the limit of what you can imagine?”

“So you aren’t.”

Not a demon.

Not a demon’s lackey.

Not the lackey of a demon’s lackey.

Then what was she?

A human collaborating for personal gain?

Simply an associate with a transactional relationship?

But if that were truly her position, how had she recognized what I was immediately?

“It’s rather strange, though. People who aren’t connected to demons usually can’t define what’s inside me so easily.”

People from the Temple could easily tell that I carried Demonic Energy, and roughly how much.

But they couldn’t determine exactly what was inside me.

Needless to say, ordinary knights or mages who merely knew how to manipulate Mana were even worse.

Unless I directly showed myself controlling Demonic Energy, they didn’t notice anything at all.

“Aren’t you actually a demon?”

Therefore.

Because of that.

She couldn’t be just a simple collaborator.

Until now, the only ones who had called me Deception, Falsehood, and Wrath before I revealed anything myself had been demons.

“…Do not compare me to such lowly things.”

After checking the Demonic Energy that had recovered during our brief exchange, I shaped it into a cluster of spears and fired them at alternating steady and irregular intervals.

The rapier, twisting chaotically as she deflected both my sword and the spears, sharply stabbed at my longsword’s crossguard.

If it slid only a little lower, my fingers would be where the crossguard could no longer protect them.

“You call them lowly, yet you seem awfully attached to their side.”

Before it could slide and stab my fingers, I fired a Demonic-Energy spear upward from below—

more bullet than spear, really—

and knocked it aside.

At the same time, I moved my sword away and advanced.

If the rapier didn’t stop me, then I too could stab her.

With either my sword or a spear of Demonic Energy.

That was what I expected.

Her faint smile and white forearm knocked my sword away.

Slice.

Something acted—

and the whip, now severed of its own accord, tore through the air and ripped the surface of my leg.

Somehow she had built up enough speed even in such a confined space.

My clothes split.

My skin burst open.

A sixth wound, large enough to be visible from far away, was carved into my body.

“Your tongue is long.”

“…They say weak people have long tongues.”

Thankfully, the muscles weren’t damaged.

I took half a step backward and responded to her next attack.

Thanks to my barrage of Demonic-Energy spears, I could redirect the whip elsewhere, but the sword was different.

Only after shaking the ground and ruining her balance did I barely manage to divert it.

Aware that a groan was escaping me, I smiled awkwardly.

“Why did you betray them?”

Being pushed back was one thing.

If I had already thrown away the taciturn, overbearing persona, then I might as well gather this much information.

“If you were a knight, you should already have been in a position where you could enjoy nearly everything. Why would someone who isn’t even a demon betray them?”

Ah, of course, I wasn’t asking because I was truly curious.

What benefit would investigating her identity or reason for betrayal bring me?

It wasn’t as though her tragic backstory would contain clues that the real Demon Knight and Wrath had worked together.

But the fact that someone who looked perfectly human could immediately see through my identity was extremely important.

Later—

assuming I could disguise myself, or do whatever else was necessary, and once again travel this world in a form far removed from the Demon Knight—

I would need to avoid people like this if I didn’t want my identity exposed.

“What did they promise you?”

So I destroyed the incoming whip with Demonic Energy and kept talking.

If speaking interfered with my breathing, I would shut up, but for now it didn’t, so I kept going.

My mind remained sharp enough not to become so absorbed in digging into her circumstances that I forgot my original purpose.

“Or are you someone they order around without offering anything in return?”

At last, her brow rippled.

It was only a faint movement, but unmistakably a disturbance.

The teal haze rising from her body began to intensify like flame.

“Since ancient times, the tongue has brought many disasters.”

“And it has brought plenty of peace too. Conversation and compromise. Aren’t they more beautiful than fists?”

When I grinned as I answered, her eyes narrowed slightly.

The faint smile remained, but it was immediately obvious I had irritated her.

“You will regret this.”

“Did you know? The fact that you got angry makes it seem even more true.”

Wait, you really are an unpaid lackey?

At my words, additional force silently filled her sword.

So even someone who acted that lofty had a sore spot.

I caught the glasses that kept trying to slip off because of her increasingly violent attacks with my empty hand.

Slip.

The glasses returned to my inventory.

No one here was going to obsessively target my eyes, and if they broke, I would be the only one losing out.

That was why.

“They’re coming!”

Soon, the ground began to soften like mud.

“The demons are coming!”

Ghouls ravenous for rotten flesh.

Gutworms burrowing through the earth in search of prey.

Slimes whose bodies were made of acid, squelching as they searched for something to dissolve.

Earth-Eaters suffering from an unsatisfiable hunger, vomiting through their navels whatever they swallowed.

Corpse Devourers that bred moths and maggots inside their flesh as they wandered in search of corpses.

And more.

From the rotten soil carrying famine, drought, and disease, the hands of demons erupted.

This was the moment I had been waiting for in order to use my Demonic Energy more efficiently.

“You filthy……”

But amusingly enough, the first thing they grabbed wasn’t me.

Kyararararak.

[Hungryhungryhungry.]

[Eatateateat.]

[Foodfoodfood.]

“How dare you lowly things.”

For the first time since I had attacked her, the teal-haired knight’s expression turned cold as something seized her ankle.

“Know your place.”

BOOM!

Teal force erupted outward, blasting away mud and demons alike.

“Mm.”

That was the moment I kicked off the ground and charged her.

The wounds carved all over my body spat blood.

The silver blade cut through the air.

“I refuse.”

The crescent slash I had been saving until now vertically cleaved through the knight, the space behind her—

and even the smaller demons standing there.