297

Chapter 297 — Proof (2)

Deathbringer bit his lip, startled by his own words.

He had been completely baited.

He’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

His head filled with self-reproach.

“But… why? Why draw all the manpower toward Münmund……?”

While he lamented, Daniel, who had finally understood the situation, opened and closed his mouth before asking the question.

Meister answered in Deathbringer’s place as the thief swallowed hard.

“Like I said earlier, they probably aren’t after the Hero. And they likely aren’t targeting another eastern city either. If they wanted to attack a city without a Great Demon, they’d need an enormous number of lesser demons… but instead of throwing all of them into one overwhelming offensive, they chose to apply pressure gradually.”

In other words, they had given humanity time to gather in the east.

Whether every last soldier had already arrived was unimportant.

What mattered was that military forces were not easily moved, and once a redeployment began, it was difficult to reverse.

“And then there was the advance notice that a Great Demon had appeared. It would’ve been more effective as a surprise move, but they didn’t do that. They deliberately let the information reach us beforehand. Münmund is in terrible danger, send your elites immediately. Like they were wagging their tails and beckoning us over.”

“Are you saying they really used a Great Demon as bait? A Great Demon?”

“That’s where you’re wrong. It could serve as bait precisely because it was a Great Demon. You can tell from the fact that the moment we heard about one, we abandoned everything else and rode for nearly ten days. Erysichthon stole every bit of our attention simply by appearing.”

The moment Münmund became a definite objective, the surrounding cities’ manpower began converging on Münmund.

The Hero’s party had done so.

The knights of Manhapelt had done so.

And cities that had emptied themselves to send reinforcements would then draw manpower from even farther away.

In other words, the distribution of elite soldiers shifted.

Eastward.

Toward Münmund.

“Question. If all the manpower concentrates in the east, what happens to the west?”

Then what happened to the opposite side during that time?

“…There are harsh mountain ranges there. And the Great Temple.”

“If they’re willing to put one Great Demon forward as bait, there’s no reason to assume another Great Demon wouldn’t be involved in the real attack.”

Meister remembered the might of the Great Demon they had seen in Bemurchen.

Mountains that were like fortresses to lesser demons would mean nothing to beings like that.

Because they were Great Demons.

“And wouldn’t the Great Temple be valuable enough to attack even if it meant throwing away one Great Demon?”

With two Great Demons dead, the demons had probably become impatient as well.

Even Bemurchen, which had been destroyed by a Great Demon, would eventually be rebuilt.

The city’s true value had come from its Magic Tower, and most of that Tower’s human resources had survived the disaster.

“Bemurchen may have fallen, but in the end that was merely the loss of physical resources. As long as its people remain, it’ll probably recover within ten years. And now that the monster believed to have been the mermen’s nest is gone, the bloody clashes with the mermen will probably decrease too.”

The moment Bemurchen, one of humanity’s arsenals, recovered, the demons would once again be placed at a disadvantage.

In other words, if they were ever going to gamble everything on one move, now was the only time.

“Then isn’t there a pretty good chance they’re making a diversion in the east to strike somewhere else? The south isn’t worth attacking because of the desert, and there are too many people in the north.”

And so Meister finally voiced the hypothesis that had only become a certainty after coming here.

“Explain that idea in more detail.”

Faded red hair stirred behind Meister.

* * *

GROOOOOOOOOOAR!!

The instant Ratel’s fang gouged into Behemoth’s cornea, the gigantic monster squeezed its eyelid shut and screamed in pain.

I hadn’t torn the eyeball itself, but there was no doubt I had hurt it.

“This thing is fucking tough……!”

But that wasn’t the level of damage I’d been aiming for.

Come on. Forget everything else—shouldn’t the cornea at least be soft?

If you stabbed a human eye with a needle, it’d probably get wrecked!

[I told you. It’s extremely tough.]

Immediately after throwing Ratel, I somehow maneuvered my falling body.

After spinning several times, I landed on the tusk protruding like an elephant’s.

It was the lowest point of the tusk.

BOOM!

Unfortunately, Behemoth was currently thrashing its entire body around.

I slipped off the tusk.

Snap!

The arm I flung out at the last second only barely managed to hook my fingers into one of its ridges.

My body kept trying to slide downward.

“Hup!”

But depending on how you looked at it, a crisis could also become an opportunity.

I used the recoil from Behemoth’s violent shaking to launch myself upward.

My body sailed through the air, cleared the tusk, and flew toward the monster’s head.

Grip!

The sparse, coarse hair growing there caught in my hand and gave me something to hold onto.

My feet braced desperately against the uneven creases of its hide.

“Ratel!!”

But I couldn’t hold on like this for long.

I called the Ratel I’d thrown away.

A little Demonic Energy was consumed, and the white mass flew back toward me.

Grab!

I changed its shape into crampons, gloves covered densely in spikes, and a hooked rope.

[Clever.]

With actual climbing equipment, both climbing and holding on became far easier.

Tap. Tap.

My body began steadily rising about a meter with every jump.

The violent movement nearly flung me off several times, but with the tools combined with my physical abilities, it was manageable.

Once again, I stood between the beast’s brows.

Fwoosh.

Changing Ratel’s shape every single time seemed likely to consume a considerable amount of Demonic Energy, so instead I drew the amber-colored sword.

The blade immediately burst into flame.

Its brilliance, bright enough to be visible from ten li away, shone in place of the sun hidden behind the clouds.

Whoosh!

My body flew into the air as well.

It wasn’t because I had been flung off by the beast’s rampage.

If I wanted to stab the middle of that enormous eye with a sword rather than a spear, instead of striking only at its edge, I simply needed to do this.

I floated in midair directly before Behemoth’s eye.

Only then did Behemoth notice me and begin closing its enormous eyelid.

[There.]

But I was already prepared to throw.

Under the illusion that time had slowed, my hand hurled the longsword I had been gripping by the blade.

The sword, blazing as brilliantly as the Mana it contained, flew directly toward the exact spot I had stabbed before.

GRAAAAAAAAH!!

It went in.

The moment I was certain the blade had torn through the sclera, I yanked the rope—Ratel—tied around its hilt.

Just as the emerald knight had once retrieved a rapier with a whip, my sword came flying back along the rope.

Snap!

At the same time, the hook attached to my other hand caught on Behemoth’s tusk.

I no longer had to worry about slipping off like before.

Which meant all I had to do now was repeat this process.

“Hey, demon.”

[What.]

“Ripping out its eyes isn’t going to kill something this big. What do I do after that?”

Now that the pattern was established, everything else was just repetition.

But would something this massive die from losing one eye?

Obviously not.

[Why are you even asking? Tear the eye open, crawl inside, scrape out whatever flesh you find, or cook its brain.]

“…….”

So that really was the only option.

I let out a small sigh at the answer I had half expected.

It had taken this long just to pierce a cornea.

How long would it take to break through the flesh and bone inside?

The tedious future ahead drew another sigh from me.

[Annoyed? Don’t like it? Then lend me the body. I’ll butcher it cleanly for you.]

“Shut up unless you want me to have your appearing and running your mouth banned too.”

[How prickly.]

Using the crampons I had fashioned from Ratel, I ran along the tusk much more easily and resumed my climb.

Drip.

Drip.

Then the situation changed.

Mud began pouring from Behemoth’s hide.

It looked strangely similar to sweat being expelled through pores.

The foul-smelling sludge gushed out, making the beast’s body slick.

Read only on MUGEX

[What an irritating trick…….]

That wasn’t all.

From the watery mud crawled demons resembling cockroaches.

Each one was about the size of an adult man’s upper body.

It was disgusting.

Buzzzzz.

At the same time, the swarms of flies that had been circling everywhere suddenly vanished.

It happened far too abruptly for me to assume I had simply killed too many of them.

“Aaaaaagh!!”

“Ghk! Aaaaaagh!!”

[Tch. Looks like it’s going to heal the wound we finally managed to inflict.]

No.

They hadn’t vanished.

They had simply moved to another battlefield.

“Save me! Please save me!”

“God!!”

All manner of distant screams drifted from the city wall.

They were the screams of people being eaten alive by insects.

“What the hell is that……?!”

[Why are you surprised? Behemoth’s essence is Gluttony. It’s an insect bastard that devours everything.]

I cut down every cockroach charging at me and glared at the demon.

Explain.

At my look, the demon folded her arms.

[What’s the point of asking when you already know? It’s hungry, so it eats. That’s simply natural.]

“So it eats people?”

[Well, its current attempt to gorge itself probably isn’t only because of its nature. Maintaining its domain for two days must have drained its strength, and stabbing it in the eye probably made it feel threatened.]

As she spoke, she swept back her hair.

The long white strands reaching beyond her waist rippled softly.

[Still, that thing really is an idiot. Once every demon it brought with it died, it should’ve stopped having useless thoughts and retreated. But instead it stuck its head in here thinking, If I eat that… if I eat the body containing me, could I? What a pathetic beast.]

But the opponent was what it was, and the situation was what it was.

I couldn’t afford to let her steal my attention.

Slash!

I cut off another cockroach’s head, clenching my teeth.

[Anyway, kill it quickly. Even if it eats everyone on the wall it won’t become particularly threatening… but if it uses all of them to heal its wounds, that’ll become annoying in its own way.]

“How do I stop it?!”

[…What?]

“I’m asking if there’s any way to stop those insects!”

[Hmm. A way to stop them… Burn everything down along with the humans?]

“Fuck, not that!”

[There isn’t anything else. You can’t seriously expect to kill each of those insects one by one.]

Fucking useless bastard.

What the hell had she been doing all this time without developing even one ability for something like this?

I swallowed the words rising up my throat and jumped again.

If there was no other solution, then I would simply kill Behemoth as quickly as possible.

[Just empty out all your Demonic Energy and blow away the city with it. Then the insects disappear too, and that thing won’t have anything left to eat, so it won’t be able to regenerate.]

“Stop talking complete bullshit!”

But when I once again reached the space between its brows, what greeted me wasn’t an open eye.

The eyelid was tightly shut.

[Don’t if you don’t want to. But remember this. The reason Behemoth was able to succeed Beelzebub as Gluttony despite being this stupid—and the reason it has held that position until now—is entirely because of that fucking body’s toughness and regeneration.]

How the hell was I supposed to get through this?

I clung to the eyelid.

Even when I forced my fingers into the gap and pulled with all my strength, the eye wouldn’t open.

Thrust!

Driving the sword into the gap didn’t change much either.

If I forced it, I could wedge it in little by little, but I couldn’t imagine being able to stir the blade around inside the eye.

Creeeeeeak!

The sword blade saturated with Demonic Energy made a strange noise.

It was the sound of the internal frame twisting.

[For reference, Beelzebub, the first Gluttony, died after taking two Flash Strikes. You know—the attack that sweeps an entire area clean. Mammon, the one we fought in Bemurchen, died from one direct hit. Even that snake bastard you called an Ancient Beast only survived one because it wrapped itself in a turtle shell, and died to the second.]

Fuck, this wasn’t even my sword!

I pulled the amber-colored blade back and rammed Ratel in instead.

Fortunately, Ratel didn’t make any bending noises.

[But Behemoth survived more than three of my Flash Strikes even before it ate Beelzebub’s remains. Understand what I’m saying? That fucking thing can only be killed by slowly wearing it down over time—and only after everything nearby that it could eat has been removed so it has no opportunity to heal.]

But Ratel still couldn’t force its way through.

I turned toward the demon, who was explaining just how absurdly tough Behemoth was.

[So give up on that city.]

Then I looked down again.

[You will never die, but there is equally no chance that you’ll kill Behemoth before those people do.]

On the city wall, the soldiers and the dark-blue-haired man leading them were fighting desperately.

* * *

“…I understand.”

“Representative…….”

“Thank you for your opinion. Thanks to you, I now understand that we must resolve Münmund’s situation as quickly as possible.”

After hearing Meister’s explanation, the Hero quietly closed her eyes.

The Great Temple.

Her nest.

Her homeland.

The place where everything had begun.

Perhaps even the place she could call home.

“…Goody-two-shoes, are you okay?”

“Why are you asking?”

“W-well, because the Great Temple might be in danger…….”

“And?”

But she could not allow herself to be shaken by that.

The great warrior of God.

The executor of destiny.

The Hero who received the oracle.

She barely suppressed the churning in her stomach and steeled her heart.

“It is not certain that the demons are targeting that place. And even if it truly is in danger, there is nothing I can do. It is too far from here.”

“…Goody-two-shoes.”

“Meanwhile, there is land suffering before my eyes, and it lies within a distance I can reach immediately to save it. What I must prioritize is obvious.”

“Goody-two-shoes.”

“So remember the hypothesis, but put it out of your mind. What we must focus on is the battle directly ahead of us, not a possible threat to the Great Temple.”

The words, spoken at the cost of slicing through her own chest, sounded more convincing than she had expected.

Convincing enough to persuade even the person who had spoken them.

Having completed her self-justification, green eyes stared blankly beyond the mountains.

The sky at daybreak was a beautiful pale violet that did not suit the situation at all.

“…And begin preparing to leave.”

At least there were clouds obscuring that beautiful color.

That was fortunate.

The Hero slowly closed her eyes.

“…What should we do with the villagers?”

“We leave them.”

“But…….”

“They are safer remaining here. We do not have enough manpower to leave soldiers behind to protect them.”

Please let the clouds fill this entire vast sky.

Please do not expose her before the sun.

“If it truly bothers you, then at least leave them some weapons and sturdy— Ah!”

Because hers was a life far too shameful to reveal beneath the heavens.

“Wh-what is it, Goody-two-shoes?”

The Hero bit her lip.

Among the unfamiliar Demonic Energy, something impossibly familiar had begun making its presence known.

“…Let’s go.”

Dawn.

Dawn had come.

A day that would change them had begun.