The next thought that crossed my mind was that Verita was, in fact, highly rational. Of course, calling a woman rational felt absurd when she could pluck out her own eyeball or smash a man's skull without hesitation. If I had to name it, she was rationally insane.
I couldn't explain exactly what that meant, but the image of her crushing Peron's head returned to me. At the time, only the three of us were there. Verita had instantly knocked unconscious the six heroes who had fought her earlier, so no one else had seen what she did. Ultimately, I alone had witnessed her kill Peron.
That led to a troubling question: if there had been other witnesses, would Verita still have smashed his skull?
Maybe she would have done it anyway. That was the first thought I had, because she was not the sort to go mad in a gentle way.
The absence of witnesses was a stroke of luck. If ten people had witnessed the act, she would have killed ten. If a hundred had seen it, a hundred would have died.
In short, Verita was a walking bomb. That was how I decided to think of her. The only reassuring part was that this dangerous bomb didn't seem primed to explode on me.
Actually, that wasn't reassuring at all. What made a bomb dangerous wasn't just its target but its range. One careless throw, and even the one who had hurled it could be caught in the blast. By the same logic, even if she didn't aim her madness at me, staying close to her meant a high chance of getting swept up in an eventual explosion.
I'm oddly pleased with this analogy. All right. From today on, she's Bomb Girl Verita. Not that I'd ever dare say it aloud. The nickname would remain locked in my head.
Bomb Girl Verita fixed her gaze on me. I tried to think of the right words, but starting the conversation wasn't easy. Her eyes glowed strangely as she stared at me after uttering her last line. If I had to describe it, she looked a little like a dog proudly returning a frisbee.
I had no intention of praising someone who had just bashed a man's skull in without warning, so I quickly changed the subject. "What about your wounds? Shouldn't you stop the bleeding?"
As I spoke, the absurdity of the situation struck me again. Verita held no resentment toward Peron, the man who had carved her body open. She had bled so much that it was a miracle she was still alive, yet there had been no bravado or mockery when she tore out her own eye and handed it to him. Perhaps she truly believed it was the reasonable thing to do. And yet, the same woman had flown into a frenzy over the slightest scratch on me. Calling her overprotective didn't even begin to cover it.
Bomb Girl Verita beamed at my question. "Thank you for your concern! However, there is no need to worry. God will take care of this wound soon."
"How?"
Verita pushed back her blood-matted hair and slowly opened her eyes. Dark stains still ringed them.
I caught my breath. A flawless eyeball now stared back where the injury had been. I couldn't tell if it had regrown, regenerated, or if it had never been harmed at all. What I did see was that her eyes were mismatched. The left gleamed amber. It wasn't like when I borrowed the power of a divine beast and my eyes temporarily changed. This felt different. Maybe she hadn't been born with heterochromia. Maybe her true eye color had always been hidden or disguised.
"Are you human?" I asked.
"Of course I am," she replied with simple certainty.
"Human eyes don't regenerate. Even trolls need months, and lizards take longer still," I countered.
"Priest, your politeness feels like a wall between us. Speak to me more freely."
A wall is exactly what needs to stand between us.
"I would also argue that miracles never come to those without faith." She slipped back into the bearing of a devout nun, her voice calm as she prayed. "The gods say there can be no miracle without belief."
"Is that so?" I felt my thoughts clearing as I spoke. I had reached my limit with Bomb Girl Verita, yet I pressed, "You said you would follow my orders, right?"
"Yes. Do you have an order for me?"
"Yes. This is the first one. From now on, don't make a fuss over every little wound I get," I instructed.
"I'm sorry, but that's hard to follow," she replied.
She was rejecting my very first order?
I frowned. "Didn't you say you would obey an order to lay down your life?"
"Yes."
"So why won't you follow this one?"
"Sometimes, duties matter more than my life. I call it my mission," she explained. "Priest, I must uphold my duty as your guardian. I ask for your understanding."
Understanding, my ass. Bomb Girl Verita spoke politely, but it was clear from the start she had no intention of bending to my will. I started to doubt whether she truly regarded me as someone to be served.
"So, if someone hurts me in the future, you'll smash their heads?" I ventured.
"That is my duty."
"Really? Then what if I just order you to die here?"
Verita's gaze froze on me. Her mismatched eyes were unsettling, stickier and more tenacious than Lise Ladygoth's serpent-like stare. Then she smiled slightly. "I'm naturally ready to comply."
A shiver ran down my spine. It felt like I was about to press a button that should never be pressed.
I changed the topic. "You remember the conditions for the second test, right?"
"Of course. Participants aren't allowed to kill each other."
"Yet you smashed my teammate's head," I said sharply.
Verita's gaze landed on Peron's corpse. "You don't have to worry about the clean-up."
"Why not?"
"I'll say a demonic beast killed him."
"And this corpse?" Even a child could tell the man had been bludgeoned to death. Any real child who saw such a scene would probably faint.
"You shouldn't worry about that."
"But I am a bit worried," I insisted.
Verita smiled again, almost warmly. "Ah. So you are worried."
"Yes."
I am worried about myself, not you. If I wasn't careful, I could easily be treated as an accomplice.
"Ahh! How can you have such a warm heart? But truly, you don't need to worry at all. I can assure you, even the bloodhound-like inspectors of the Hero Society won't notice any inconsistencies. I have plenty of experience," she said.
In other words, she had extensive experience manipulating a corpse's apparent cause of death and disposing of it. I mentally raised Bomb Girl Verita's danger level another notch.
"As you mentioned, the corpse is fairly mutilated, so it will take some time. If the seal of Behemoth's Feather is broken, I won't be able to join the battle immediately—"
A sudden roar echoed through the cave. Stalactites rained from the ceiling like hail. At the same moment, Verita vanished. Thunder cracked, and the falling stalactites shattered.
She landed lightly, looked at me, and continued speaking. "It seems the seal has been broken."
Verita frowned slightly, torn between cleaning up the corpse and confronting the demon.
She is a member of the Dark Church, yet her faith isn't directed at demons. I had assumed all factions of the Dark Church worshiped demons. Apparently, that wasn't necessarily true.
Was this how all church members were, or was Verita an exception?
I said, "Then stay here. Keep an eye on the six people you knocked out while you deal with the corpse."
"Is it really okay?" she asked.
"Yes. I'll do something about the jar."
Verita's voice grew serious. "Please be careful. The sealed demon will be strong. That is only natural. It is a fragment that broke away from Behemoth."
"Really? Stronger than a Legion Commander of a demon legion?" I asked.
For the first time, my words flustered her slightly. "Not exactly. The fragment is just a byproduct, like a strand of hair or a piece of a fingernail."
"Then I'll be fine."
She looked confused, but I didn't tell her I had already defeated a Legion Commander. At that point, Khajitta hadn't even managed to exert half of his strength.
"I understand. After I finish cleaning up and subduing the rampaging demonic beasts around us, I will secure a safe zone and join you. Please don't overdo it, Priest." Her tone made it clear she had already decided I wouldn't be able to handle the demon alone.
It had been a while since my rebellious spirit had been stirred like this. Unknowingly, I had been bottling up stress because of this woman's actions, and now I made my decision.
It was time to vent—I was going to take on the demon freshly released from its seal.
***
Chain Scythe Lorcan let out a scream like a wild beast and lunged forward. It felt as if a massive tree, uprooted by a storm, had brushed past his back. He rolled frantically across the ground, thinking, How the hell did it come to this?
"Shit!" He had avoided swearing as much as possible since becoming a hero, but the extreme situation made the curse spill out instinctively.
Was it because of his lowly birth? No. It was the circumstances. If a seal broke and an octopus demon attacked from all directions with dozens of tentacles the size of trees, even a saint would curse in frustration.
He barely dodged the next strike. Literally barely. The tentacles moved so fast that their enormous size seemed irrelevant, and the cave's narrow confines limited his options. Lorcan had never thought the cave was small until facing this damned demon. In truth, the oddity lay in the demon's size.
He glanced back at a mage standing a short distance away and shouted, "Do you have any way to stop it?"
As a mercenary, he felt a natural awe toward mages. The Warmages of the south were literal strategic weapons, capable of controlling the battlefield alone. That was why Lorcan kept his eyes on her once the demon appeared.
What was that female mage thinking? Her wide-brimmed hat obscured her face, yet he felt no tension from her. She seemed either unmotivated or deliberately hiding her strength. He had no proof, only a gut feeling, and his instincts rarely failed him. It was the same way he had realized at some point that his bratty teammate was no ordinary person.
Come to think of it, I haven't even learned his name yet. The platinum-blond-haired brat's face flickered through his mind. What could he be doing?
Lorcan had never met anyone so unpredictable. He looked like a young master of a noble family but sometimes acted like a seasoned mercenary. He understood the Dark Church's affairs with surprising depth. Overall, he carried an unusual air of experience for his age. Above all, he was strong. At a moment like this, fighting beside him would be a real comfort.
Fuck. Judging by the way he entertained useless thoughts, Lorcan realized the boy probably wasn't entirely sane either.
Lorcan started to assess the situation. The jar he had been carrying had shattered on its own, unleashing octopus tentacles that struck indiscriminately in every direction. Verita's teammates—the mage and the nobleman—had appeared at just the right moment, allowing him to defend himself to some extent. Yet the truth was grim: the situation was hopeless.
I have a feeling that this test required cooperation among participants from the very beginning. Yet the examiner emphasized that the team bringing the jar would be rewarded. The other groups had likely received the same directive. In other words, the seed of conflict had been sown. If one group greedily seized the jar, the demon's seal would break, and disaster would follow.
Besides, if anyone hurts the other teams' heroes during the scramble... At that point, their power to defeat the demon would vanish, and the trial would end in total failure.
"So, what should I do?" he muttered.
Should he just run away? That seemed the only option to survive.
As Lorcan gritted his teeth, a sudden presence hit him from behind, like a chariot wreathed in flames racing forward. He turned and saw the platinum-blond boy charging at a fierce pace.
"You!" Lorcan exclaimed.
"Is that the demon?" the boy asked.
"T-that's right," Lorcan replied.
"Okay. You still look fine."
The boy drew one of the two swords at his waist and swung at the octopus tentacle looming before him.
"Don't cut it!" Lorcan shouted.
"Why?"
"Don't cut it, avoid it." Seeing the boy's puzzled expression, Lorcan quickly explained, "If you cut it, it will divide!"
"Oh my. Then I shouldn't cut it," the boy murmured as the tentacle fell toward him. He sheathed his sword and assumed a stance as if to strike with his fist.
"You can't even touch it!" Lorcan warned again.
"What now?"
It was too late. The tentacle struck the boy, and a loud crack echoed as it flung him into the wall.
"Oh gods," Lorcan blurted.
Once contact was made, it was over. The suction cups' grip was so powerful that most adhesives seemed like jokes. Lorcan had recklessly thrown his chain scythe at it and lost the weapon instantly.
Lorcan sighed. "It is over."
The much-needed reinforcement would be killed instantly. Even if the remaining heroes combined forces, they couldn't defeat the demon.
Then a voice came from beyond the writhing tentacle. "I can't cut it, and I can't punch it either."
Startled, Lorcan lifted his head.
"Then I can burn it. That's my conclusion," the boy declared.
Immediately, a wave of heat swept over the octopus tentacles.