I clenched my fist.
Getting Teron to ask for help of his own accord—that was the prerequisite for taking this path.
‘Because this strategy absolutely requires Teron’s cooperation.’
In a way, it had been the hardest condition to fulfill. Now that I’d cleared it, the road ahead should be smooth sailing.
Except for the enormous obstacle waiting at the very end, of course.
Teron wiped away the tears streaming down his face.
“But it’s already too late for me. So please… save my friend. Save Daike.”
“Pardon?”
“You said it yourself. Anyone of bishop rank or higher can recognize someone who has contracted with a Demon.”
He was right. In this game, anyone from bishop rank upward could detect the traces left behind by a contract with a Demon.
Even if we somehow fooled the bishop who was scheduled to visit this time, Teron couldn’t avoid them forever.
That had also been the single greatest obstacle preventing me from saving Teron and Daike for the past eighteen years.
But.
“Don’t worry about that. I can deal with it.”
“You have a way?”
“Keke, you’ll have to trust me completely. It’s not like you have any other choice besides trusting me anyway, do you?”
Teron tilted his head for a moment, then seemed to accept it.
Apparently, he assumed I had some kind of special method.
Considering I treated Demons like friends, that wasn’t such an unreasonable assumption.
Teron’s expression only changed when I began slowly approaching him.
“Wait. Wait a second.”
“Keke, what is it?”
“…Why are you walking toward me with your fist clenched? Didn’t you say you were going to help me?”
A fair question.
Since I was in such a good mood, I decided to answer him with a bright smile.
“Because this is the method.”
“…?”
“It can’t be helped. I need to weaken the demonic energy, and nullifying a contract with a highest-grade Demon isn’t exactly easy.”
Rapid treatment naturally came with some pain.
Yes, think of it like getting an injection as part of your treatment.
Something like that.
“…Don’t tell me this is the method you were talking about earlier.”
“Keke, of course not. Think of it as… emergency treatment before the real procedure.”
“I see. So there’s no helping it. Then, as part of the overall treatment process, how much of it would this… physical treatment account for?”
“Obviously, not much. It’s only emergency treatment.”
“I’m asking you how much.”
Was getting beaten while knowing what was coming really that different from getting beaten without knowing?
Teron was being unusually stubborn about it.
No choice.
I’d have to tell him.
I scratched my cheek and answered.
“About… fifty percent?”
Teron’s face went deathly pale.
That’s right.
There was a prerequisite for erasing the traces of a Demon.
‘Put Teron into a state where he can no longer resist.’
In other words, I had to beat him until he was on the verge of death.
Perhaps he realized what that meant, because Teron sprang backward and put as much distance between us as he could.
“Calm down. It’s only half.”
“You mean it’s half!”
“To think the ever-positive Teron would say something so negative. The Demon must have corrupted you more deeply than I thought. Come here! Every second counts!”
“I’m perfectly normal!”
Teron started jumping around in agitation.
Was this how a doctor treating a psychiatric patient felt?
Well, there was nothing I could do about it either.
The power of a Grade 2 highest-grade Demon was already overwhelming enough.
“And a highest-grade Demon struggling for its life is even more dangerous.”
“What do you mean?”
There was no need to explain.
It was about to begin anyway.
Crack—!
As Teron kept a wary eye on me—
Demonic energy suddenly erupted from behind his back before twisting into the shape of a serpent.
“Something… something’s wrong! How can a human be that strong?! It’s impossible!”
“B-Benumael!?”
It was the highest-grade Demon contracted to Teron.
And there was a reason a Grade 2 Demon was screaming like that.
“Is he fighting Professor Caron?! Then everything’s going according to plan!”
To be fair, it hadn’t exactly been a brilliant plan.
Killing a Demon didn’t automatically terminate its contracts, and even Caron would have trouble fighting a Grade 2 Demon alone.
The reason Caron was currently overwhelming Benumael was—
“GRAAAAAAAH!! YOU DAMNED BRAAAAAAT!!”
Thunder God Adonis.
A monster capable of fighting a Grade 1 Demon alone, and even holding his own against a Legion Commander for several minutes.
There was no way a mere Grade 2 Demon like Benumael could defeat him.
“GRAAAAGH! If it’s come to this, I’ll at least take your body! Give it to me!”
“What are you talking about?! That violates our contract!”
“I don’t care! There’s no penalty worse than death!”
An enormous mass of demonic energy swallowed Teron whole.
Just like in the game.
Teron’s third phase.
The final battle.
Alex, who had been face-down in the mud, staggered over to join me.
“This isn’t looking good. We’ll have to take him down. This time, let’s actually coordinate our attacks.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go!”
Vyuern Family Style, First Secret Technique.
Energy Burst.
CRAAACK!!
My fist connected with Alex and sent him flying straight back into the mud.
He didn’t get up this time.
Well, he probably wasn’t dead.
I’d calculated the damage very carefully before hitting him.
“Hic!”
Perhaps shocked by the destructive force, Benumael hiccupped.
Why had I knocked Alex unconscious?
Partly because if he screwed up a parry and increased Teron’s attack power, that would be a problem.
But there was another reason.
“Keke, what a strange feeling. I can’t quite put it into words.”
Benumael.
In game time, he had tormented Teron for only a few days.
But in reality, he had tormented him for eighteen years.
He was also the bastard who had forced me to give up on saving them.
And now, at long last, I had a chance to bring that story to an end.
I had no idea how to describe the feeling in my chest.
“Y-Your name was Zero, wasn’t it? W-Wait! How about we talk this out? Yes, let’s make a contract! I’ll give you all of my power!”
Vyuern Family Style, First Secret Technique.
Energy Burst.
“GUUUUHK!”
A fountain of blood erupted from Benumael’s mouth.
Only after landing that punch did I finally understand what I was feeling.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have time to hear you out.”
Because right now, I was feeling just a little—
“No. I’m feeling very good.”
“GRAAAAAAGH!”
Benumael couldn’t believe it.
He was a highest-grade Demon, yet he was being completely overwhelmed.
And by only two humans at that.
“To think you dared infiltrate the Academy. You must have lost all sense of fear.”
The vicious-looking one was bad enough.
“You probably just took a wrong turn. To think a Demon could have such a terrible sense of direction. Truly unfortunate.”
But what in the world was that child wielding the golden spear?
Benumael had spent centuries toying with humans, yet he had never seen or even heard of anything like him.
“Tch!”
For a Demon, losing to a human was an unimaginable humiliation.
But Benumael chose to endure it.
Among Demons, he was considered rather clever.
Wasn’t that why Lord Astaroth, the Second Legion Commander, had taken notice of him?
‘No choice. I’ll have to switch bodies!’
Benumael had learned a demonic art that allowed him to forcibly seize the body of a human bound to him by contract.
It would take centuries for him to return from a human body to his true demonic form and recover all the way back to Grade 2.
But Benumael was more than willing to pay that price.
Unfortunately, even that wasn’t going according to plan.
“G-GRAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
Benumael screamed in a way completely unlike before.
Sensing something strange, Adonis stepped back slightly, and Caron followed suit by putting some distance between himself and Benumael.
“Did you learn some new secret technique? An attack even I couldn’t see. Impressive progress.”
“…Wasn’t that you, Lord Adonis?”
“?”
At that very moment, Benumael was being beaten senseless by Zero.
Benumael had possessed Teron’s body.
Perhaps because it was a human body, the pain was even more intense.
‘W-Who the hell is this one?!’
A pleasant-looking boy with slit-eyes.
Perhaps appearance and ability really did go hand in hand, because there was nothing ordinary about those punches. (TL Note: Reminder that Demons find Zero’s apperance pleasing, while he looks like a cockroach to everyone else)
“Urgh…!”
Benumael vomited a mouthful of black blood.
It was the backlash from his failed demonic art.
Unable to endure the pain, his link with the human had been completely severed.
His final resort had failed.
“It appears to be the backlash from a failed demonic art. Something mental, perhaps? Are you experiencing anything unusual?”
“Nothing at all. It did send a little demonic energy in that direction a moment ago. It was so faint that I paid it no mind…”
“I see. I’m not sure what it was, but it must have been his final struggle.”
Benumael thrashed desperately after losing his only escape route, but there was no reversing the flow of battle.
Caron and Adonis pressed him steadily and relentlessly into a corner.
“I-I can’t die this pointlessly…! You humans! Don’t think you’ve won! Lord Legion Commander will—!”
CRUNCH!!
With a faint squeak, Benumael’s life came to an end.
It was a miserable death for a Grade 2 Demon.
“That sounded no different from a rat dying.”
“Hmm? Would that make it cannibalism?”
“…That wasn’t funny.”
“Wasn’t it? I thought that one was quite good. Is this what they call… a generation gap?”
No. It was simply not funny.
Caron, however, kept that thought to himself.
Even he had difficulty dealing with Adonis once the old man started grumbling until someone acknowledged his joke.
“Whew… That took longer than I expected. Demonic arts… they really aren’t something to underestimate.”
Every Demon possessed different demonic arts.
A great many had already been studied and documented through analysis, but there were still plenty whose abilities remained unknown.
“Their powers come with proportional drawbacks. Once you’ve analyzed them, they aren’t that difficult to handle.”
“Figuring them out in the middle of battle is the difficult part. Times really have changed.”
The era in which Adonis had been active was one dominated more by wars than Demons.
Adonis was far more experienced at killing people than killing Demons.
“Well, at least it puts my mind at ease… though it does worry me. Creatures that worm their way into the cracks in a person’s heart… Unless someone has enough years behind them, resisting that temptation can’t be easy.”
“More importantly, are you all right? You seem to have been using your power rather frequently lately.”
“That I have. My whole body has been aching because of it. Good grief…”
Despite his youthful appearance, Adonis was an old man on the inside.
“Leave the rest to us and get some rest. No one would blame you for spending the rest of your life enjoying yourself.”
“I still have to train the next generation. War is difficult enough, and now we have Demons too. The era ahead may be even harsher than mine was.”
“Haven’t you already done enough? I could help you as well.”
Caron genuinely meant it.
And yet, for some reason, Adonis’s eyes curved into a smile as though he had just spotted an opportunity.
“In that case, there is one thing I’d like you to do for me…”
“What is it?”
“You just said you’d help, didn’t you? Surely the great Caron wouldn’t go back on his word?”
“…”
Caron sensed something suspicious.
“Go ahead and tell me.”
“Ze—”
“I refuse.”
“…I haven’t even finished speaking.”
“Because it’s obvious.”
He was clearly going to ask Caron to hand Zero over to him.
When Caron folded his arms and made his refusal perfectly clear, Adonis began stamping his feet.
“Didn’t you just say you’d help me?!”
“There are exceptions.”
“He’s an incredible talent! The Imperial Knight Order may be demanding, but he could definitely endure it. He’d grow by leaps and bounds!”
Adonis began circling around him, grumbling endlessly.
‘He really does have an eye for talent…’
It certainly felt good to see that a child he had chosen was being acknowledged by others.
But this was an exception.
Lucia, Lowell, Duke Zeppelin, and now even Adonis had taken an interest in him.
At this point, Caron was starting to wonder whether Zero went around spraying pheromones.
‘If he intends to hide his strength, he should at least do it properly… I’ll have to teach him a lesson.’
“Zero! Zero! Zeeerooooo!”
First, however, he needed to get rid of the old man in front of him.
Caron’s eyes turned cold.
“Come to think of it, I won our bet.”
Flinch!
The bet had been over whether Zero would accept or reject an offer to join the Imperial Knight Order.
Zero had rejected the offer without a second thought.
Adonis had lost.
And he still hadn’t paid Caron whatever price Caron chose to demand.
Money, information, mysteries, a wife(?).
Caron had no need for any of them.
To owe a debt to a man like that—
Even the great Adonis couldn’t help but feel afraid.
“A-Ahem! Caron! This is no time for that. More Demons may have infiltrated the Academy. The children could be in danger! We should check the direction that fellow sent his demonic energy!”
Flash!
Adonis vanished as though fleeing.
No.
He had fled.
“…I’ll need to keep my wits about me.”
Caron followed after him.
All while seriously considering whether he ought to lock Zero in a basement and raise him there.
–TL Notes–
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