To read mana is to say you can read will.
When Eve’s holy sword pierced Summerneken’s chest, I realized that twenty-meter monster was shrinking.
The wound was gigantic and the impact was unprecedentedly gigantic. Because the sanctity that had absorbed radiance touched a demon. In fact, even if the Demon King took this strike, half his life force would be blown away.
However, Summerneken was a monster that had tried to use the “sanctuary” to touch his third horn on his own.
Even though the extremities of its body began to vanish, erased by the sanctity—so its limbs were all flying off—it did not collapse.
It fell short by a hair.
The blow that fell short came back as backlash. The holy sword broke.
Clang!
Summerneken used 『Self-Summoning』 to summon himself into the air two hundred meters away. He hastily opened the distance. But there was a fatal problem with that.
Using the sanctity enough to crush that colossal two-horned demon meant, in other words, it was a sanctity so vicious it could kill Eve too, who was also a two-horned demon.
Her expression crumples. Eve falls. I checked Summerneken. He too couldn’t come to his senses from the critical hit.
Priorities were set. Hurriedly, with Radiance⁺₊⋆ turned off, I flew to Eve and caught her in my arms.
It wasn’t simply because she was in pain. Of course the damage to her guts and brain and so on would be enormous, but there was something more dangerous.
The two ram’s horns I had struggled to hide with [Illusion], stuck to her head like a Swiss roll, were now shaking and quivering after smashing even the illusion.
Accordingly, Eve’s face twisted in pain. She was desperately resisting something.
The hearts of the people of Wonderland Village, including the midwife, and the heart the Baroness Lemontree had desperately tried to raise—thus, the “human heart” that had kept that rift stopped...
『Demonization』 began to proceed.
“......”
Puhwak! With a vicious sound, Eve’s horns pushed a little farther through her scalp and popped out. Her fingernails turned black. Her fangs deepened. My little elephant was turning into a beast in real time.
I don’t know what kind of pain this is. But I had never seen this woman of a commander make such a tormented face. She grabbed the chest of my clothes and looked up at me; her mouth was wrinkled, and tears were brimming.
Something like an impulse seemed to spread. Even as her trembling nails dug into the flesh of her own chest and drew blood, she didn’t care.
I’d always known a day like this would come.
There is no medicine. The last ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) thing delivered to humanity was used up in Wonderland.
I recalled the papers on 『Demonization』 I had been researching together with Adele and Ran all along.
‘Though there are differences by individual, demonization always affects the mental state.’
An enraged, despairing underling becomes a demon faster. It’s a case verified by several observations.
Conversely, an individual who finds a human heart right before demonization can postpone it.
The gist is this. Only the “person concerned” can stop demonization.
“......”
I know she won’t be able to hear even if I speak. I knew there was no medicine.
For now I hugged that heavy upper body with all my strength. I hugged her, pressed the back of her head, and just stayed like that. There was no other way.
“......”
A quiet frenzy began. Eve tried to push me away. At first, if it was no more than her body writhing, gradually the motion of pushing me away with her arms grew. Pushing me with her right forearm, then grabbing her own right arm with her left and twisting it—this meant Eve was resisting.
She had to resist.
In real time, <Communication> clamored noisily, but I couldn’t hear it. If Eve turned into a demon here, there would be no one left who could hold the holy sword. Humanity being annihilated was only natural. I would die too. I had to bring her back, no matter what.
So I hugged Eve until I broke.
At length, Eve’s demonization progressed and the mutation of her flesh began. Her ribs spread and moved like knives, gouging through my abdomen.
“......!!”
Startled, Eve flailed with all her might, but I ignored it and stayed like that.
A suffocating paroxysm of pain surged in. From the place her ribs stabbed, I could feel the position of my organs.
Is this how it feels to be stabbed by a knife. With an indescribable pain, even my body seemed to twist. But I endured.
“It’s all right. My elephant.”
Hugging her tighter, I thought.
In the end, what we learned after countless papers and studies was only that the heart stops demonization.
Only the fact that the heart comes from the heart.
“It’s all right.”
Her wriggling ribs still tried to harm me.
I desperately wished for the elephant to stop.
“It’s all right...”
I hoped that heart would be conveyed.
Meanwhile, around that time the dying Summerneken began to move again.
Though it had neither arms nor legs, a pair of wings burst from its back.
The wings were torn by sanctity, but like a bat’s wings, they had hands at the ends.
With those hands, it moved.
As if in a last-ditch frenzy, like a cripple with both legs cut off crawling with his arms to swing a sword.
Taking advantage of my halt, toward the Hero Party.
***
The momentum of the battlefield had subsided.
After dozens of one-horned demons died, all that remained on the spot were several dozen hornless demons. And the Hero Party and the professors had to deal with those hornless demons.
However, in the process, both professors and demons staggered in a continued fight. Because everyone’s mana tanks had hit bottom. The end of a fight wrung to the limit was now unfolding.
There, the last to start moving was Summerneken.
It was clear this two-horned demon could not accept that it had been defeated. Its lower body blown off, it moved the ten-meter-reduced upper torso. It began crawling using only its two arms, and there was no proper way to stop that.
< I-It’s coming!! >
< We have many wounded here! Someone, someone stop it! >
< Damn it! I have no mana! >
While wounded professors—without mana—were dragging their comrades along.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!!!
Summerneken crawled like mad and swung its five-meter-long forearm like an iron sledgehammer.
Kwak-boom!!
Three or four professors were killed in a single blow.
Even without mana. Even without a lower body. With physical might alone, it was already a top-class monster.
But it wasn’t the end.
『 Demon Summon 』
Summerneken summoned a “mouth” into its burst-open chest.
It was the complete lower jaw it had failed to summon earlier when it tried to summon “Bomiteka.”
< T-That lunatic, what the hell is it...!! >
It wrenched that chest maw wide open and then smothered the faculty whole.
Crunch!
< T-That monster!! >
Then Summerneken’s shattered wings began to be filled in with human skin. At the same time, its lower body, forearms, and wounds began to restore little by little.
< Impossible! >
< No! It’s recovering!! >
< We have to stop it! If it recovers like this, we’re wiped out! >
In the midst of this, the warrior or assassin professors who had recovered a bit of strength rushed in and attacked Summerneken. They jabbed its flesh. They broke its ribs. They kept trying to pierce that tough hide.
But a senior professor drained of strength was again caught in its hand and went into that mouth to be chewed. Crunch-crack! Its wounds began to heal.
Kwak-kwak-kwak-boom!!!
Summerneken was a monster.
Even when explosions blew on its head and that much violet blood flowed, it didn’t care and moved.
A professor who became the next target stood there dazed.
< Professor Gula! >
< What are you doing, Gula! I said dodge!! >
Other professors raged.
“D-Don’t come! You idiots! You have to stay here!!”
< What are you saying! Dodge, Professor Gula! >
Gula was a professor of the Department of Assassination. The professors stomped their feet. He clearly had to run away, yet for some reason he didn’t move his body.
Even though the grotesquely vital Summerneken was approaching right in front of him.
< I said dodge! Gula, you crazy bastard! >
“...Ghk! I-I can’t! You fking! You fking bastard!!”
Even while trembling, Gula threw shuriken and struck Summerneken. It wasn’t going to work. So he should have just stood there trembling.
< What are you doing! Dodge, Gula! Dodge—!!! >
Right after the professors’ shouts echoed in the communicator.
The maw in Summerneken’s chest wrenched wide open.
At last,
Fwoosh!
The instant it engulfed Gula, who had squeezed his eyes shut—
Ka-ka-kang!!!
A man with a demon sword stepped in to block it.
< Glory! >
Glory twisted his whole body as he held that mouth back.
Regrettably, Glory’s demon sword was, at least for facing a demon, not a good item.
Grrr-grind-grind-grind—
As if thinking, “what a treat,” Summerneken bit that sword with its teeth and crushed it.
Thud-clunk!
At last, when it swallowed the demon sword, a fierce violet glow began to surge through its body.
Because he knew this would happen, Glory did not face Summerneken head-on.
“ What a foolish bug. ”
Summerneken laughed. It seemed that shapeless monster laughed. At the same time,
Ku gu gu gu goong—
A heavy purple mana began to gush out; it meant Summerneken had recovered a considerable amount of mana.
Even so, nevertheless, Glory stood here.
He could read the battlefield.
Eve’s demonization was progressing.
The only person who could stop it was Dante Hiakapo.
The Hero Party was tied up by the hornless demons.
The faculty’s mana was chopped to bits.
‘Either way, if not this, this battle moves to defeat.’
And what Professor Gula had been enduring with hidden behind his back was—
The broken holy sword, 「Peacemaker†」.
Puhwak! Puhwaak!
Summerneken’s forearms and lower body began to regenerate. Even though it had eaten only a single demon sword, it was recovering like a monster.
But what flashed through Glory’s head at this moment was Professor Dante’s prior message.
— You have to do it.
— There will be a point where there is something you must accomplish. Only you.
— Whatever it is, I hope you make it happen.
In the end, Glory stood before the broken holy sword.
The hero briefly looked up at the sky.
It was ten years of memory.
A teenage murderer who, over ten years, atoned, repented, did good, atoned, repented... and yet, unable to reclaim the light that had left him, lived in self-loathing for ten years.
‘The light’ left me. I no longer have the qualifications of a hero. I am not unaware of that. And yet...
O heavens.
O lofty Transcendent Star✯.
If you have even a little heart to look upon pitiful me, grant this single moment to this sinner who has cursed himself all his life.
“Huaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
The hero reached his hand toward the holy sword.
As always, an extreme rejection surged in. His hand was pushed away. It bounced off, burned. Chunks of flesh began to peel away.
“ Filthy bug. You have no right. ”
Summerneken, having finished sloughing its skin, wrenched its maw wide open again. This time as if to swallow that false hero whole.
“We—we have to stop it!”
“Keep Glory from being eaten!”
The professors leaped and rushed in. But it was already too late. The maw with violet teeth flew toward Glory.
A scream like a throat being torn.
At the end of it, light poured down onto the broken holy sword. Glory realized Dante had turned the power of the 『Spectrometer』 toward him.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
At the end of it, a miracle unfolded.
The “hero” faced the demon.
Summerneken, realizing a shocking truth, hurriedly shot his body up into the sky, but by then Glory’s 「Peacemaker†」 was already driven deep into that head.
The sanctity that burst out through the back of its head lit up the world.
─────── .
It was the death of the two-horned demon Summerneken.