“Dean!”
“I’m fine—watch Ezekiel’s side!”
His jowls jiggled. The collapsed Shaman panted for breath. Should’ve lost some weight.
But had there been no delicious donuts, he’d have had no reason to live up to this day, and so this deluxe body was history’s proof that it had kept him alive.
“Dean!”
“Ah, I said I’m fine. Guard Ezekiel!”
The fat middle-aged man waved his hand broadly.
He was fine. In fact, he was. If he lifted his eyes he could see Jinksythe with two arms blown off and half its skull missing from his [Throw].
Surprised, are you, you wretch.
Before, when he and Ezekiel were distracted in Zone 2, that mutt had been poking around like a joke.
Now that I’m here, not a chance.
Who is this Shaman?
A professor of great Hiaka, godfather of the Assassination Department, with the duty to protect all professors......
“Dean!”
“Ah, hey! How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine? Are your earholes—!”
Turning his head in irritation, Shaman froze on the spot.
An Assassination Department professor with half his head cut off was twisting his neck toward the severed side and moving like a puppet. It was the 『Curse of Necromancy』. He himself had dodged when Jinksythe shot it earlier, but this guy must have been hit.
Seeing what was flowing out of the earhole—what should have stayed inside—Shaman shut his mouth.
“Dean!”
From the eyes of the one approaching with a blade,
tears mixed with blood were flowing down.
“Run.”
*
People raise a toast to small successes.
Professors are no different.
< Trappycche is dead!! >
< Good! Excellent! >
When Trappycche’s ruptured body lost the cohesion that held like jelly and scattered like sludge, cheers erupted all around.
At that moment Glory shouted.
< Not yet! Stay sharp!! >
<Uhk!> It was a shout that made the professors’ hair prickle.
One crest.
They had only just crossed it.
< That was only a summon! Even now, this very moment, Surmaneken is recovering! >
All eyes fixed on Surmaneken floating in midair.
However two-horned a demon may be, it cannot spew summons without price.
It had sacrificed a great deal of mana and life-force to call the one-horned demons here.
< You mean it has more to summon? >
But just as the allies awaited Dante’s entry amid the dragging engagement,
so too were the two-horned demons waiting for something.
< It does! >
Glory recalled once more Professor Dante’s words
about the “most dangerous enemy” Surmaneken handles at present in war.
— Ilushatacom.
Its might is not even a quarter of Jinksythe’s.
Its field control not even a quarter of Trappycche’s.
Its potential threat likewise not even a quarter of Bomiteka’s.
But it has a very dangerous property.
— ......
For some reason the professor’s eyes had been sad.
Yet he did not forget his charge.
— You have to do it.
Glory tightened his grip on his sword.
*
Meanwhile, Rebecca felt a fierce inner fulfillment as Trappycche shattered.
‘I did that.’
Several professors had been eaten by that thing, melted away.
She had crushed what no one could control.
Everyone had seen this, everyone would spread it.
......to him.
‘......’
Rebecca smiled faintly. Even in this mess, thinking of telling Dante, asking if she’d done well—wasn’t she ridiculous.
What was she doing.
She was old enough to know better. She wasn’t some abused daughter begging for daddy’s attention.
‘...How did I end up like this?’
Even so, Rebecca grabbed a stick and started to run. She had to.
‘I.......’
Rebecca knew. She had lived behind many masks. And to live that way, there were things she had to keep in order.
Her face as Princess of Hiaka, her adult pride, her responsibility as the Hero Party’s mage, and so on......
But none of it mattered. She no longer cared for such things at all.
One by one, when she threw off the masks laid over her, what remained was a bare face. Without face or responsibility—the purest face of herself.
In Rebecca’s mind, it could be expressed like this.
‘......’
A girl who wants to be loved.
***
It seemed Surmaneken, in preparation for such a war, had fed Bomiteka a glut of demons beforehand.
What Bomiteka vomited, ripping the mouth of that pitch-black skull wide up to the ears, was a hundred-odd hornless demons.
Each a monster on par with a professor’s level, flying through the air, firing guns, flashing blades.
But as Trappycche broke, the Hero Party flipped the field once again. It was a pure difference in brute force.
Slowly, the demon army broke.
Jinksythe’s forearm fell.
Bomiteka’s jaw shattered.
Soserche’s ribs and Kambatuk’s body had half been blown away.
A situation derived from the pure fact that the Hero Party’s power overwhelmed the two-horned demons’ expectations.
At this, Surmaneken took to the air.
From the ground, pitch-black mana rose along with his body. Like a kind of typhoon, it wrapped the entire area, became an unprecedented force, and gathered to a single point.
“Fire!!!”
“Fire! Snipe him!!”
A storm of bullets, shuriken, and magic poured toward him. Without passing through any shield, they struck his body direct.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWAAANG!!!
But the stubbornly tough flesh of a two-horned demon did not break. Clothes ripped. A horn cracked. Hide and flesh burst—but the mana surrounding the two-horned demon did not disperse.
『 Summon 』
As the beast’s tongue spilled out, the mana that had been whirling around a single point suddenly changed.
『 Ilushatacom 』
The sky split.
In a darkness without a speck of light, a deeper abyss began to pry open its maw.
“Ah!”
“Th—this can’t be...!!”
Seeing the calamity unfolding on high, the professors—humanity—stood transfixed in rapture.
At last, from within the opened maw, a calamity began to crawl out.
It had the form of a gigantic “eyeball” with entrails clinging to it.
As if it took the maw of the abyss for an eyelid, only half of the sphere protruded like an eye.
Its horn may be singular, but in size it was greater than any one-horned demon’s horn.
It was a great calamity of the twelve specializations handling [Illusion]. A one-horned demon that, even within Dante’s experience and reason, had never once existed—one of [Hell Difficulty].
Ilushatacom.
The instant it blinked as it looked down upon the world—
All color vanished from the world.
This was the manifestation of the 9th-level ultimate illusion, 『Primal Mirror』.
It was a blink.
In the minds of the many standing there, the history that had shaken their lives flashed past.
⋮
[ Run ]
Dean “Shaman Kreutz” remembered those words.
[ Run ]
Once, someone had repeated them to him without end.
He could not remember who.
Perhaps it had been himself.
[ Run ]
It was more than fifty years ago.
At the words to run that reached his ear, Shaman Kreutz did run.
Perhaps those words had given him courage.
Perhaps they had given him an excuse to say he’d been urged by someone......
And so Shaman ran.
Because—
He was afraid.
He had excuses. That he was born into a side branch of the Kreutz royal family and raised, to some extent, with care. That while all that was happening his father fell from power, and he ended up, unjustly, an assassin.
That he witnessed the death of the friend who had been with him all his life, right before his eyes. That he was next. That his role was to strap on a suicide vest and charge to die. That thus, to a Hiaka with whom they then had conflict, they had to give the casus belli: “We killed a member of the Kreutz royal family.” That, of all people, it had to be him—ignored most by the royal family, raised as a tool of assassination.
That he did not want to die like that.
Those were his excuses.
The future had already been decided.
— I want you to show your honor, at least at the end.
His master had advised him.
— Dear. I’ll raise Herden well.
His wife had consented.
— Master. I won’t forget.
His disciples were already grieving.
[ Run ]
So, though he was a grown adult, though he was an assassin who had sworn to live as a tool, because he «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» was afraid......
Shaman Kreutz disobeyed.
After that he defected to the Kingdom of Hiaka.
That one flight, so ugly and shameful, still torments Shaman Kreutz to this day.
— You are an animal, Shaman. Even a lowly cur wouldn’t betray family the way you did.
— How could you do something so dishonorable? What am I supposed to say you are as I raise this child?
— Master—...no. Shaman Kreutz. You who betrayed your nation will surely die in pain.
After that he lived his whole life haunted by such nightmares.
[ Run ]
The scenery from then surfaced before Shaman’s eyes.
Even realizing this was [Illusion], he was too ashamed of himself to endure it.
And yet, someday, he had had the gall to lecture Batalion.
He knew better than anyone how vile he himself was.
[ Run ]
I am a runner.
A traitor.
*
Sometimes, in nightmares, Glory hovers on the brink of death. The middle and end of the dream always differ, but the beginning is always the same: he was walking toward the kitchen.
Heading to the kitchen.
Rummaging in the shelves.
The scene of taking out a kitchen knife.
By now he knows it was the 『Curse of Domination』. A demon’s trick that had placed the curse of demonization upon him. With it, his body moved on its own. His memory floated like he was drunk; no method could control him.
But even the outcome could not be blamed on others. He stabbed the village chief grandpa who had raised him with love since childhood. He stabbed the aunt who screamed beside him. He stabbed the older brother who ran in with a hammer......
He went outside and swung the knife at anything that moved. He attacked the people of Wonderland Village who had always treated him well despite his lifelong taciturn, distant nature.
Then Glory was locked in a tiny room. Inside, he punched the window with his fist, rammed it with his head, and shouted to stop. But he could not control his movement himself.
Only when the midwife who had received him at birth, even while stabbed, held him did he come to his senses within it.
— That wasn’t you, Glory. Was it?
Glory sank and leaned his head into the midwife’s arms and wailed.
He destroyed everything he cherished, with his own hands.
At the same time, Glory felt the “light” leave him.
It had been the “qualification” given to him from the moment he was born.
Once lost, a “condition” that could never be found again.
That day, Glory lost his qualification.
Death is a blink.
Loss is forever.
Even so, Glory, who still breathed, thought killing himself was wrong.
He had to keep living somehow.
He tried to be good.
He ran nimbly to help others.
He worked diligently for the injured.
If there was a penny in his hand, he passed it to a hungry child.
Even so, the “light” did not return.
He knew.
That effort was meaningless.
That no matter what he did, the past he had ruined—the day, the moment—could not be undone.
Even so, he tried.
Rather than pleading he hadn’t done it and running away,
he prayed earnestly that doing this, at least, might atone; that once more the light would shine upon him......
But still, Glory lives in the dark.
*
Rebecca was about ten. On her birthday. Wearing her prettiest new clothes and receiving presents from the maids, yet at that time snorted at by maids and royal retainers alike.
Out of the blue, some girl appeared at the palace. Even at a young age Rebecca sensed stories drifting in, and this was a child all the maids and retainers marveled at and praised.
A daughter of some baron’s house in decline. A genius of swordsmanship, they said?
From the very first moment she met her wandering the palace, ten-year-old Rebecca must not have liked that girl.
Every day, when she looked in the mirror, there was always a blunt, ill-tempered girl full of dissatisfaction. But that girl was different. Her expression was bright. Loveliness clung to her face.
Her name—was it “Eve”...?