Penadex was in a hurry. The moment the demon he had summoned through his body—no, the portion of power provided by the demon—emerged, his forearm was wounded.
He immediately thrust out a human forearm and seized the wrist of the lover and partner standing by his side. To be exact, he dug in his nails to make a wound and tore as he grabbed.
"Penadex—! You doglike—"
The snake-handling witch couldn't finish her words. Her body withered at once. Her tongue curled inward and her eyeballs shriveled.
She tried to resist, to summon a few snakes, but even the snakes pushed their heads out of the air only to crumble apart like rotted rags and scatter down.
Then the blood dripping from her wrist ran along Penadex's body. Not all the blood fell to the floor—instead it reversed course and crawled up along Penadex's hand.
The snake witch soon became nothing but a husk and collapsed to the ground. All her stored mana was taken, and even her life-force was drained. So she died.
Penadex didn't even look back at the dead witch. He had taken his objective. What of it if a person needed to die?
He had killed well over hundreds in his experiments, killed his own kind, and even captured monsters and beastmen to lock them up.
Had he spared children, women, the old?
As if he would. In Penadex's eyes, they were all the same slabs of meat. He was superior; the rest were inferior beings.
Humans especially!
He had the right bloodline and was gifted at spells. No being was superior to himself.
"I am a noble."
Among mages, he had been born with special talent—if that wasn't nobility, what was?
He retraced the moments from the time of his birth to the present.
Whatever he took an interest in, it came to him by itself. In childhood, when he knew nothing, even a glance made women fall head over heels, and sometimes men as well.
What about after he turned to magic?
Heaven-sent talent, a prodigy.
That was who he was.
"Penadex, I hate you."
Hatred gathered.
"Lord Penadex, with all I am."
Reverence gathered in equal measure to the hatred.
Those who have much look to higher places. He wanted to stand beyond the sky.
"How far can inborn talent reach?"
Farther out, to the edge of knowledge one cannot even imagine—where, the moment he reached it, he could die in rapture and ecstasy and be content.
Even if no one understood, he would go on.
Penadex was a special being. He saw himself so. He believed he would swallow knowledge and become something new in the end.
"Then why."
Why is my body trembling?
Through a contract with a demon, he had incarnated it here. A middling mage would have had his body seized in an instant.
But not him. He could maintain his ego and handle the demon.
"Then why?"
The same question rose again and again.
Why did his heart prickle, why did the tips of his hands and feet tingle, why did every muscle in his body lock like a tightening cord as cold sweat ran?
The recollection of his past felt long, yet in reality it was an instant. Only a brief moment.
Penadex, with the demon's eyes, looked at his opponent.
Two blue eyes, clear as a mountain lake. Everything else was hidden by shadow.
Only the blade descending from above.
"Kiiaaak!"
Penadex's body had frozen, but the demon's had not. It pulled the body away. It thrashed and dodged. The demon's power seized control of Penadex's flesh.
"Fear."
Terror surged and clubbed Penadex's brain. Was this the first time in his life he had felt it? No. But never so intensely.
"Oh—."
The one holding the sword let out a light sound of admiration and moved. A heavy meteor fell along two thin, fine blue lines. A bright blue meteor.
"Kiiiiii!"
The demon was aghast, and Penadex was terrified. Slice. This cut severed one of the demon's arms outright.
The severed arm hung in the air. Black smoke scattered, and the fallen forearm also crumbled like ash.
The demon hastily cast a spell of his own. The medium was the life-force of Penadex, who had called him.
But just before he could complete the blood-wrought spell, the flow of mana was cut. It was the instant a campfire would have caught—someone doused it.
"Hello, demon."
It was the witch's whisper.
She interfered. A witch with a spell-world deft enough to wreck a casting waved her hand without a hint of a smile.
"She is happy right now."
Vertical-slit pupils— the dragonkin murmured.
"Should I sew your mouth shut."
The witch spat foul words at the dragonkin. He nodded to show he understood.
The demon paused to think. He found himself wondering where exactly he had been summoned to.
"A swordsman, a dragonkin, a witch."
Where was this?
The demon harbored doubt.
***
"What are you in the Demon Realm? A minion of the Demon Realm? A gatekeeper? A janitor? I was curious what came after that."
Rem muttered. The demon's words had been cut off, and he was quietly curious about the rest.
Enkrid saw that the image he'd just drawn in his head wasn't reproduced exactly as he intended. The demon had evaded his cut.
The mage, merging with the demon that had sprouted from his back, had his original body bent like a hunchback.
The demon stretched out two legs and moved.
"Looks a bit hideous, though."
The one who had been a mage dangled between the demon's thighs. The sight called something to mind. One didn't need much imagination to get the idea.
Enkrid ignored the exterior and revisited the moment the thing had dodged his blade.
His eyes skimmed the demon's forearm. He saw something rippling over that forearm. It looked like pitch-black soot, and like something he'd seen somewhere before.
"Thornbush rampart."
Was it similar? It looked so.
The thing had draped something wrought of wraiths over its forearm. That made part of the path of Enkrid's sword glance aside.
Of course, that was because Enkrid had swung as a test. He hadn't gone all out.
He had held reserves and gauged his foe. Put another way, he had plenty of leeway.
Enkrid swung while prepared for every trick the enemy could pull. Everyone watching knew it. Even the demon realized it in part.
That swordsman was far too relaxed. So the demon thought.
"What are you."
As a result, the demon gave up on introducing himself. He muttered as the two eyeballs in the blunt head that jutted from his back whipped left and right.
The eyeballs moved so far they almost popped out of their holes. That abnormal motion, in itself, would impress upon one that he was an existence of the Demon Realm.
To an ordinary person, it was grotesque enough to parch the mouth.
"Ugh, an eyesore."
But there wasn't an ordinary person here.
Rem spoke without concern. Just "intuiting" an existence of the Demon Realm here wouldn't shake anyone's core. Everyone present was a Balrog slayer.
"Makes me want to beat him to a pulp."
Ragna said. The mage, grotesquely swinging between the legs, lifted his head. His hunched back rose as he looked around in all directions like a nervous rat.
"Penadex. Is that the star you wished for?"
Esther saw the sight and filled her voice with contempt.
And the dragonkin said,
"Fear. The terror of annihilation?"
He recalled the temperament he often saw in things that stood before him.
"Kwaaak!"
The demon threw back his head and screamed into the air. With that, he shook off part of his fear.
"I am the lord of ten thousand wraith—"
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
Boom!
A projectile blew the air apart as it slammed into his head. With a thunderous crack, part of his face twisted and was crushed. Black blood splattered everywhere.
The demon covered his face with his remaining arm. At the same time he tried to chant again, but—
"Stop."
The dragonkin's Dragon Speech halted it.
"I am the master of a legion that rules ten thousand wraiths."
The demon muttered. Until the moment he was summoned by a contract, he had never imagined he'd be treated like this.
"Demon, fight quickly."
Penadex, conquered by fear, stuck his head up from between the demon's legs and urged him on. The sight of a head lifted between the thighs was truly grotesque.
"Shut up."
The demon snapped at the squalid mage. In the end, wasn't this mess because this bastard had inserted himself where he shouldn't?
Demons are masters of deals and contracts. He sensed the annihilation of his existence and moved his mouth.
"Do you wish to face the Lord of a Hundred Thousand Wraiths?"
For Enkrid, it was a question that required no pondering. Also, it was a title he had heard before.
Even if today repeats, there are things that do not fade. It was the same name as the demon that appeared as Count Molsen died.
"I am the Lord of a Hundred Thousand Wraiths."
The bastard who spouted that. A demon. Likely one of the lords of the Demon Realm. Was it one of the six the underling that came before had mentioned? Perhaps.
"Would be nice if you called him."
Enkrid said. Asked if he wanted to face him, he answered yes.
"..."
The demon was briefly at a loss for words.
"Hurry, fight."
The mage between his legs stuck his head up again.
"Feels right to cut that nasty thing off first, don't you think?"
Rem cut in.
"Shall I cut it?"
The dragonkin asked his intent.
"They're already fused. Cutting it off won't change anything."
Esther spoke to reality.
"Still not a pretty sight, though."
Ragna rested Sunrise over his shoulder as he spoke.
Jaxon had wordlessly taken the demon's back. He hesitated over whether to neatly carve out what hung between the thighs.
"Hurry, hurry."
The mage, his reason paralyzed, flopped about. Watching that, Esther did feel something.
Her heart didn't waver. Only—should she say she hadn't expected them to fall apart so hideously?
Astrail had been the group that hounded her for decades and killed her teacher. They were the target of her resentment, and the very cause that had pushed her into overreaching and taking a curse upon herself.
She was so sick of what they pursued that she wanted to grow strong and overturn them all.
Thinking back, Esther had done something tremendous. Because she hated being hunted, she tried to build a spell-world that would overwhelm them.
Regardless of whether it was possible or not, there was a time she put resolve first and foremost.
That didn't mean she relied on relics or another's strength—she did it solely by pressing forward herself.
Had her frantic struggle back then gained her anything? She gained a curse. Because of that she was led to Enkrid, so if not the prank of the goddess called the Lady of Fortune or Lady of Fate, then what would you call it?
In the end, only after meeting Enkrid in this land did Esther reconstruct her spell-world anew.
"What was needed was the heart."
A heart that knows how to cherish people, a perspective that recognizes what is precious.
"What do you even call this? A heart that knows how to love?"
Even as she thought it, she almost snorted.
The Witch of Strife and a seeker of spell-worlds talking about love? A word that made her downy hairs stand on end just to imagine it, perhaps.
But she would admit what must be admitted. The heart to cherish a person, someone, broadened her spell-world.
"Penadex, you imbecile."
Esther condemned her foe.
Was the path of abandoning being human, in the end, to entrust your ego to an existence of the Demon Realm?
Was that all those who chased her and tormented her amounted to?
That angered her. Rem picked up the words that followed.
"That's you."
Esther decided that once all this was over, she would lay a curse on that damned barbarian.
"My contractor is a vampire. He's called a noble of the Demon Realm as well. Kill me and you'll earn his enmity."
The demon spoke reasonably, and just as when he dealt with the former One-Killer, Enkrid knowingly chose the irrational direction and walked it.
"As I wish."
With short, heavy words he lifted Dawn Tempering. He recognized the wraith-armor draped over the demon's body, and also knew the thing had a knack for shaking perception.
"The reason calculations go wrong."
Experience is always right. Having faced a Balrog, Enkrid glimpsed the demon's individuality.
They would all have different talents. The Balrog was simply the one specialized for brawling among them.
Advancing, he swung. The demon made one last resistance. He gathered part of his subordinate wraiths at his fingertips, sharpened them, and thrust.
Enkrid knocked aside that pointed tip with his descending blade.
Tung—
A sword forged of Will parried the foe's attack and pressed on. He didn't care what lay at the end. He had something he believed in, and so he kept that conviction. He stoked his Will and set his creed.
Pick, pwuak.
Just as he'd parried, Enkrid moved his sword up and down. With strength far beyond a human's, he chained a crown-splitting downward cut and an upward cut from below. With that, the demon was split with the crotch as the center.
Black blood poured out in a rush. The summoned demon unraveled and died.
Between the demon's body as it went slack like mush and turned to dust, a wraith's face appeared. It was one of the lords of the Demon Realm who felt that a subordinate he commanded had died.
"I am the Lord of a Hundred Thousand Wraiths… you again?"
The demon who appeared spoke. He had not forgotten Enkrid. A being who commanded a hundred thousand wraiths had excellent memory by nature.
"Meeting again."
Enkrid replied. Just as before, the Lord of a Hundred Thousand Wraiths also sensed the witch's presence. It was the same as when another of his underlings died. That underling had been Count Molsen.
Back then too, he had tried to heap curses upon them when he faced a moment like this, but failed.
"Because of you, two of my limbs have been cut. Stop it."
Curses didn't work anyway. The Lord of a Hundred Thousand Wraiths offered a more practical request—perhaps a proposal—than expected, and vanished. No—he did leave one more line just before he faded.
"If possible, come under me. I'll treat you well enough to satisfy."
A voice breathed out among dust as it burned away in the sun. It didn't echo layered upon itself, and, like meeting eyes with someone you knew in passing and offering a greeting, it was that light a sound.
Even Rem shut his mouth with a low "Mm—" at such a thoroughly practical exchange. The demon disappeared, and the fight was over.