“There’s no way. You clearly have a constitution that makes you incapable of using magic.”
“Everyone who’s seen me use power says the same thing. Quinoron. You’ve known since you were a professor, haven’t you? I can use magic.”
“This and that are different…!”
In the corner of the elevator, the air was growing dense. It was a sensation that could only be described that way. As if something was pressing down on the lungs.
I barely rummaged through the bag hanging from my waist and pulled out a rope. It was the rope I always wore across my forehead to cover my face.
“…Kgh. Khk….”
Quinoron coughed up blood with his chest still pierced through. It was proof that the immense mana was churning violently inside him.
“Manifest. [Beli—]…!”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t open your mouth.”
When I tried to cover his eyes with the rope, I almost got caught by the spell chant. A dangerous guy. But that was all.
Quinoron was a mage.
He possesses broad knowledge of magical studies, enough to be appointed a professor at the Academy, and he is especially well-versed in magical tools.
Right now, his left hand was Quinoron’s unique magic tool called “Belial Link”.
Unlike ordinary mages who manipulate reality through mana waves and spoken incantations, that left hand can directly interfere with mana waves.
In other words, it allows him to produce his own incantations quickly and even nullify an opponent’s magic.
But even so, it didn’t matter.
Quinoron was still a mage.
And when my opponent is a mage, I rarely lose.
“That’s impossible…”
He muttered quietly. His smiling expression had vanished, replaced with clear confusion.
“Why? Something wrong?”
It was “Magic Parry.”
A technique that uses a constitution where mana waves exist only inside the body.
Normally, it would be impossible for such a skill to affect even high-level magic.
But in this situation, things were a little different.
A horrifying amount of mana was circulating inside my body.
All the mana that had been maintaining this underground space.
Half of it had already been radiated into this space, but the remaining half was still circulating inside my body.
An amount of mana that no living body could possibly contain had formed a single raging torrent within me.
Based on that torrent of mana, simply getting close to him allows me to cancel every spell he activates.
In other words, Quinoron and I were a bad matchup for each other right now.
“Don’t be so impatient, Professor Quinoron.”
“Huff… Haaah….”
I picked up the rope again and covered his eyes.
“Let’s make things fair first. It’s unfair if you’re the only one who can see.”
A tune slipped out of my nose.
Back in the modern world, I used to listen to songs often to help myself fall asleep. When I listened to great singers, there were times I felt like singing along. Especially on Fridays before the weekend.
In other words, I was in a Friday kind of mood. I was so excited that pitch and rhythm didn’t matter.
“You can still endure this much?”
When my humming stopped, silence followed.
Only the intensifying pressure of mana continued to warp the space around us.
I focused my mind on the horns. It was an unfamiliar sensation, yet adapting wasn’t difficult, as if they had been there from the beginning.
I radiated the mana.
◆Available Mana: [500,000] → [0]
“How about now?”
“Guh, ngh… nngh….”
“Oh dear. That must hurt. Your eyeballs look like they’re about to pop out.”
A free deep-sea experience. Decompression sickness caused by mana pressure do not attempt this at home.
Humming again, I pressed the elevator button. My destination was the lowest floor.
But maybe because the safety mechanism had been destroyed when I forced it earlier,
With nothing more than a press of the button, the barely fixed elevator began plunging toward the floor.
At this rate, it would crash straight into the bottom.
It was the completion of the idea I had in mind. As I fell, experiencing the strange sensation of weightlessness, I laughed.
A thrill bubbled up in my mind.
Boooooooooom—!!!
Soon, the elevator that hit the ground exploded.
Red liquid painted the air.
***
Dawn.
Sally White, a member of the White Ship organization, held out a roughly drawn portrait.
“Have you ever given a ride to someone who looks like this?”
“I-I’m not sure. Just a little while ago, a suspicious man stole my carriage…”
“…A suspicious man? What did he look like?”
The coachman who had been trembling glanced at Sally.
A nun’s habit. Could he trust her?
“You’ll feel better if you answer. Now answer.”
It was a strange statement. The air seemed to hum softly.
As if possessed, the coachman nodded.
The answers began pouring out of him effortlessly.
“…He was completely soaked in water, and he looked, looked like… like the monster of Lake Harun….”
“Was he perhaps wearing a band tied around his head?”
“…Yes. Ash-gray hair, red eyes… a demon, a demon…?”
Sally’s eyes sank coldly.
“You said your carriage was taken. Where did that stolen carriage go?”
“It was clearly heading toward the capital… He must have gone to Black Alley. Vile, insidious scum. A monster like him would have nowhere else to go….”
“Stop.”
“…!!”
She felt sorry for the coachman who had lost his carriage, but that didn’t mean she could let him say whatever he wanted.
Sally discovered that she felt more offended when Adel was insulted than when she herself was insulted, and she let out a bitter smile.
“The cost of the carriage. I’ll compensate you. My companion behaved rudely.”
“Y-Yes… thank you….”
The coachman began trembling again. As if it had all been a lie that he had just been cursing the criminal in fury, he stared blankly as he slowly withdrew.
“…Are you going, Sally?”
“Yes, of course.”
Henry, who had been watching the scene, asked. She answered in a tone that suggested the question was obvious.
“Then go on ahead first. I’ll join up with the captain.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Henry sighed as he looked into Sally’s shining eyes.
“Sally. Be careful.”
“Don’t worry.”
“…Nothing ever gets fixed perfectly. That’s what I’ve learned from living.”
“Yes, I know.”
…Is this really the right thing?
I’m not doubting Adel, but demons don’t care about human circumstances.
Since Adel Bliss returned from being a demon to being human, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to become a demon again.
There were many things he wanted to say. But Henry couldn’t open his mouth carelessly.
It was because he respected the resolve Adel Bliss had shown before and also because he worried that Sally whom he had raised like a niece might be hurt.
“Don’t worry.”
“…Alright.”
“I believe in Adel.”
Sally smiled brightly and climbed into the prepared carriage.
Her destination was the capital. Black Alley, infamous as the most sinister place in the capital.
She was planning to track down Adel, who had quite literally smashed the Harunsdel meeting to pieces and disappeared.
He’s probably pushing himself too hard.
He was the kind of man who would easily risk his own life just to confirm the feelings of his older sister, Camilla.
She couldn’t allow him to do something like that again this time.
***
A tremendous demonic power began to surge from the underground laboratory.
The mages stationed on the lowest floor panicked and scrambled into the corners.
From the pillar through which the elevator descended, an enormous crashing sound had begun to echo.
“What….what is that?! The emergency exit is blocked!!!”
“What? Move!! This is… a barrier spell. Was the shielding set up wrong?!”
The commotion lasted only a moment.
Cracks suddenly spread across the elevator doors, and countless shards of metal burst outward.
Everyone instinctively covered their faces and shut their eyes.
And when they opened them again—
Over two meters tall. Writhing thorny vines. And three horns.
“…A demon?”
Someone whispered.
And the word was correct.
Stepping over blood scattered across the floor like decoration on a cake, a figure stood there.
The mages participating in the experiment fell into confusion at the completely unexpected intruder.
It was an underground facility whose location had been perfectly concealed, a place whose method of entry was known only to a few participants in the experiment, a place difficult even to discover.
Even the seven types of barrier spells installed by the Archmage Maria had been broken through without even a warning alarm.
Moreover, the intruder had the appearance of something that could not be clearly identified as either a demon or some grotesque creature. Their minds simply refused to accept the reality. All they could feel was a paralyzing shock.
“One, two, three, four… eleven. Are you all of them?”
The moment the creature spoke aloud, the mages in the underground lab were completely seized by fear. The growling voice and the horns made it clear that the being before them was an “intelligent demon”.
The very thing they had so desperately wanted to create.
And yet, something was strange. If they were to witness the very existence they had longed to create, joy should have come first.
But instead, having even forgotten to breathe, they felt only a chilling, skin-crawling terror. They couldn’t even twitch a finger, let alone blink.
Everything had happened the moment they met the being’s flickering red eyes.
“All of them?”
The second question was delivered together with a slash of the blade.
A fifth-circle mage died from that single strike. As if a piece of debris had rolled across the floor, his body was cut apart without a sound and collapsed with a dull thud. It looked like discarded trash thrown aside.
As that unreal scene unfolded again, the thread of reason finally snapped.
The mages simultaneously reached for their respective magical tools.
But before their hands could even touch them, the opponent moved. No one could even see what he had done.
The next instant, an ownerless arm was spinning through the air. The heads of two nearby mages flew off. By the time someone tried to cast a spell, the fifth had already fallen, and when a spell was finally completed, only three remained standing intact.
Crack.
Even the hard-earned spell failed to work. The high-output magic vanished the moment it touched the opponent’s skin, as if it had never existed in the first place.
“Aaaagh!!!”
Instead, the one who had cast it was simply lifted up like a skewer as the opponent swung his sword with visible irritation.
Now only a single mage remained alive. With trembling hands, he pointed at the demon.
“Are you… all of them?”
Without even a hint of his breathing disturbed, the creature asked.
The demonic figure repeating the same question as before looked even more grotesque up close.
Madness alone flickered in his inverted-colored eyes. Blood covering his entire body dripped down, drop by drop, onto the floor.
“U-Uh… Aaaagh!!”
The lone surviving mage, driven mad with fear, activated his spell. Aureus. Superheated metal shot forward at high speed.
But when the demon raised his arm, the magic burst apart with nothing more than a faint shattering sound.
“Good. So you’re the last one who carried out the experiments.”
Somehow, the creature was certain of it.
With a single stomp on the ground, he silenced the blaring alarm that echoed through the chamber, then slowly approached the mage.
“D-Don’t come!! Don’t come!!! Monster!!”
“Oh dear. That hurts my feelings.”
Adel grabbed the man by the jaw and hurled him toward a stack of metal containers.
It was a place filled with sharp fragments.
“Aaaaargh!!!”
And then, in the very next moment—
There, the presence that had been hiding skewered the flying human like a skewer.
Watching the scene, Adel muttered quietly.
“……Was I too late.”
What emerged from the countless pieces of debris was a form of a demon, like Adel himself.
Wings stitched together from pieces of flesh.
Two horns shaped like a visor covering the eyes.
A body covered in wounds.
It was the form of a small girl.
The next generation after the unfinished test subject, “Shadow Guard Drei”.
A second-generation artificial demon that had completely accepted the demonic factor.
The scenario boss, the “Demon of Pain and Dreams”.
……She was collapsed on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
[……I’m sorry. I’m sorry.]
[Please. I won’t be noisy. I won’t cry anymore.]
“…….”
[Please don’t kick the cube. I’m begging you. Please don’t hurt me.]
Adel slowly approached. Even after entering her range, there was no sign of caution.
The small girl merely kept wiping away the tears that streamed down her face, desperately trying to stop crying.
[I don’t want to cry, but it hurts so I end up crying. Even so, I’ll endure all of it.]
[Please…….]
Adel gritted his teeth with a harsh crunch.
His body had already reached its limit.
But he didn’t care about something like that.
◆ [Total Magical Structure Analysis] activated.
“……It’s going to be alright now.”
[……Mister…… who…… are you……?]
“You won’t hurt anymore.”
◆Warning!! The demonic factor is corroding the body!!
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