Chapter 83 - Please Don't Do This (8)

Ayu Hin was not a port city. It was true that it was adjacent to the beach, but due to the terrain, it was faster to travel by horse from the Hidden Harbor than by ship.

However, if the number of people was around three hundred and there weren't even any horses, that dynamic was bound to be reversed.

So the pirates at the harbor lowered their ladders themselves. The ladders of the ships that would transport the people of the Order and the Mages to the waters off Ayu Hin.

"What made you step up?"

Windhand plopped down on the side of the ship. It was a spot where she could see Ayu Hin built on the highlands in the distance.

"I didn't expect you to be the first to offer a ride. And to the Order, at that."

However, there was already a passenger sitting there. Windhand handed a bottle of liquor to Boss Rahong. It was a bottle she had secretly stashed away from the harbor.

"Didn't you... Didn't you say it?"

Even though she likely knew that fact, Rahong obediently accepted the liquor instead of pointing it out. Terribly strong alcohol gurgled out from the copper bottle.

"That we couldn't lose our families again... That we shouldn't let them live on a burnt pile of ashes... I just thought those words were right, that's all."

She gently lowered her wrinkled eyelids.

"Because children have no sins."

"... What's gotten into you, you hunched-up old hag. Bending all your stubbornness."

"Do you think you won't grow old?"

"I'll probably live longer than you."

"Right. Live a long life. Live a long time and see more of this shitty world."

"Are you cursing me right now?"

Idle chatter was perfect for hiding heavy hearts and sorrow. Furthermore, liquor was a means to let those hidden emotions flow away before they could pile up.

"... Do you think they succeeded?"

"How should I know."

Windhand took back the bottle and shoved the liquid into her own mouth. She ignored the healer's warning not to even think about drinking alcohol since she had been stabbed in the stomach.

"With the harbor completely ruined like that, if they can't even kill the Bipurit gang, we're totally screwed."

There weren't many among the pirates who listened well to a doctor's words.

"Captain!"

Just then, someone in the watchtower shouted loudly. Rahong's eyes curved fiercely.

"Don't make a fuss. What are you going to do if the demons catch us..."

"A blue signal fire has gone up in Ayu Hin!"

"...!"

"Bipurit is dead!"

That was news well worth shouting about.

* * *

"Gasp!"

The Inquisitor sat up the moment her eyes opened. The breath she urgently inhaled was cold, and at the same time, heavy.

Her lungs, or perhaps her ribs, and all the muscles surrounding them were incredibly stiff and sore.

"Where is the Demon Knight?!"

But this was no time to succumb to such pain. She urgently looked around. As her head whipped around, only one side of her hair slapped her cheek, and the surrounding scenery caught her eye.

It was a prison cell. One decorated rather cozily.

"...?"

The first hypothesis she formed was whether she had been too late.

However, if she had truly been too late, she would never have woken up. Therefore, that hypothesis was dismissed.

Then had the Demon Knight been subdued? With even her collapsed, how?

No, more importantly, what about the safety of those around them?

RUSTLE.

First of all, her own life was perfectly intact. Judging from that alone that things hadn't gone to the absolute worst, she completely stood up.

A fluffy cotton blanket was pushed aside and fell to the floor. It wasn't quite at the level of having a bed prepared in the cell, but several other blankets were piled up underneath the top one to serve as a makeshift bed.

"Ah, they're here."

Furthermore, her eternal partners, her mace and shield, were resting side-by-side against one side of the prison wall.

Seeing the armor she had left with the main force neatly laid out over a piece of cloth, it really didn't seem like the worst-case scenario.

"Is Bipurit really dead?"

"You saw his head mounted, didn't you."

"No... It's just hard to believe that monster was Bipurit..."

Not to mention the sounds of people chattering away outside in the hallway.

The Inquisitor blinked, then decided to change her clothes first.

She had left her armor behind due to the successive conditions of fast movement and infiltration, but she missed it all the more because of that.

"When is the Hero going to wake up?"

"According to the Priests, she isn't severely injured."

Eavesdropping on the soft chatter, she quickly donned her armor. Even without a squire, the iron knight was fully geared up in less than ten minutes.

"Is that monster really going to just be sealed..."

CREAK.

She pushed the open iron grate door. The metallic screech of an unmaintained door quickly echoed down the hallway.

The chatter coming from a bit further away came to a halt.

"H-Hero!"

"Have you awakened?!"

The Inquisitor saw people belonging to the Order racing toward her. Of course, just because she said 'people' didn't mean there were actually that many of them.

"I-I'll go let them know!"

One of them even turned around and ran off. The remaining two arrived in front of her.

"Yes, well."

After giving a light nod to those who had scrambled up to her, the Inquisitor checked on the important matters first.

"What is the situation?"

The Demon Knight, the Thief, and the people who had run over to help at that time.

How events had unfolded after she collapsed.

The Priests hesitated momentarily at the Inquisitor's question. She still lacked experience mingling and speaking with people, making her unable to catch delicate emotions, but it didn't feel overly negative.

"First... we will explain from the beginning."

"I'm listening."

After a long pause, they began their explanation.

How the main force managed to arrive here with such perfect timing, why there were only that many personnel, exactly how many casualties there were, how they handled the aftermath, and so on.

"Thanks to the help of the pirates at the harbor, we were able to come up here quickly. We considered the possibility of them being hostile, but everyone was quite cooperative."

"While entering the city, we witnessed the enemies in a state of confusion, so we divided our forces to subdue them."

"Out of the 38 people who came to the castle, there were 0 deaths and 35 injured. Among them, 4 were critically injured, but the Priests began treating them on the spot, so they kept their lives. They are currently recovering."

"Out of the 264 who remained outside, there were 19 deaths and 37 injured. The enemies all fought like a disorganized rabble, so we didn't sustain massive damage. Most of our fatalities occurred while resisting the demons."

"Currently, the Mages are establishing safe zones centered around the castle and the underground prison, and our side is focusing on eliminating demons and rescuing lives."

The Inquisitor listened quietly to the report. Then, whenever her curiosity grew a bit heavy, she interjected with questions.

"Did the pirates not come?"

"Due to the danger, they remained on the beach. Since we sent a signal after successfully retaking the area, they probably returned to the harbor to fetch the supplies as promised."

"What do you mean the enemies were in a state of confusion?"

"It seemed there was a problem, as the demons were attacking Bipurit's faction. There was hardly any chain of command visible, and they were just running around in sheer panic. It seems the Archmage divided our forces because he judged they could be subdued easily enough at that level."

"Ah, that was probably the demons running wild because all the Demon Contractors in the castle had died."

"Yes. Based on our investigation after the situation ended, we reached the same conclusion."

"What happened to Bipurit?"

"His death has been confirmed. His corpse is currently mounted with the head displayed."

However, the question she had pushed back to the very end was, naturally, this one.

"... What happened to the Demon Knight?"

The fact that out of the 38 people who faced the Demon Knight, there were only injuries and no deaths suggested one possibility. Yet, there was no guarantee that it was absolutely correct.

After putting it off over and over, the Inquisitor finally asked about him. As a Hero, she shouldn't think this way, but... she found the words the Priest might say a little frightening.

"He is..."

Then, the Priest's expression clouded over.

"... The Bishop argued for execution, but after the Archmage objected, it was decided that he would be placed under a temporary seal."

The Inquisitor's eyes went wide.

* * *

"I'm too old for this suffering..."

The Archmage briefly massaged the back of his neck at the endless list of tasks.

He had overexerted himself bringing 300 people, yet the fact that even that was not enough stifled his breath. This was not a problem that could be solved with a Sage's knowledge.

"Is it at least a stroke of heavenly luck that no one was swept up in the disaster...?"

The elderly Shaggy briefly reflected on the moment the Great Demon possessing the Demon Knight blew away the castle.

Thinking about it again, leading only 40 people inside and not bringing the rest of the personnel near the castle was a truly lucky choice.

If he had dragged them all to the castle entrance, they would have died alongside it when the castle was blown away.

"... Well, perhaps not 'no one'."

Of course, the sheer luck ended there. They had simply been obliterated without a trace, leaving no way to verify it, but he didn't believe there had truly been absolutely no one there.

It was already too much of a coincidence for the survival of the people he had led, the Inquisitor, and the Thief.

"Did the attack just veer off course... or did he make it veer off?"

The Archmage looked back at the castle. The top of the castle was blown wide open, as if deeply scooped out with a trowel while leaving only a bit of the base.

That was precisely the trace of the Inquisitor blocking the attack, and the mark of the sword strike aiming slightly above them.

That was also the reason he was debating between it veering off and it being made to veer off. The height of the remaining walls was almost exactly the same as the height of a person lying prone.

That was also why, instead of raising the possibility to the Order that someone might have been swept up in it, he definitively concluded that there were zero casualties.

If the Demon Knight were to wake up unharmed, and if he could control the demon just as the possibilities he showed suggested.

He could save more lives than he might have taken this time.

"... If there are any dead, I am sorry to them."

Was it said that goodness becomes meaningless the moment relative value is used as a standard? But wisdom did not reside strictly in goodness alone.

As a Sage, he concluded his own absolute best. It might not be the morally right decision, but it was one without regrets.

"Hmm."

... There were no regrets, but there was a little bit of fear.

She stretched her fingers, which had grown stiff just from briefly recalling the event. A demon was still a demon. To think a single blow could make a person cower this much.

"Archmage!!"

Just then, a booming voice called out to her. Hearing that voice, she thought that what was bound to come had finally arrived.

Rather than liking or disliking it, it was closer to recognizing that the necessary workload had finally showed up.

"Keep working."

"Yes."

He instructed the Mage as such, glancing at what they were working on. In the middle of an open space cleared out by pushing away a building, the Demon Knight was bound.

The work the Mages were doing under his supervision was reinforcing the binding magic circle to make it stronger.

"You're sealing the Demon Knight...?"

Meanwhile, the person who approached with the clanking of armor soon widened her pupils. Her gaze landed on the sealed man.

However, while she lacked flexibility, the Inquisitor was quite brilliant and also knew how a seal was executed.

There was no way someone like her would be surprised by the seal itself. So, what the Inquisitor was surprised by was...

"Th-That sword, what is it doing there?"

It was likely because of the sword remaining pierced straight through the Demon Knight's abdomen.

"He stabbed it in himself."

"Himself...?"

The Archmage could roughly guess where the Inquisitor's memories had cut off.

If she remembered that the Demon Knight had kept the Thief alive and instead harmed himself, she wouldn't have asked back like this.

"Yes, he did it himself."

"How could..."

Hearing that the Demon Knight had harmed himself, the Inquisitor's eyes trembled.

But she wasn't someone who couldn't guess the intention behind that self-harm either, so the Inquisitor finally steadied the wavering of her eyes.

"But, if he is left like that, he will die from excessive blood loss."

"Do you really think I would just leave him to die? Don't worry. He is receiving treatment."

No. He questioned whether treatment was even necessary in the first place. His wound simply wasn't fully closing due to the sword; his recovery rate didn't really require much healing to begin with.

Even if he lacked the level of regenerative power the Inquisitor displayed, his natural healing ability clearly surpassed that of ordinary humans.

"Still, that is too much. He... He should not be treated like this."

Well. Was that really true?

The Archmage followed the Inquisitor's gaze and stared at the sealed man again.

Beyond his limbs being bound, the man even had his eyes and mouth tightly wrapped with consecrated cloth, but to the Archmage's eyes, it still seemed insufficient.

That was entirely separate from whether he trusted the Demon Knight or not.

The Demon Knight's martial prowess clearly transcended the average human, and he was dangerous precisely to that degree.

Even if the probability of the demon awakening instead of the Demon Knight was limited to 0.01%, it meant that the moment that probability was triggered, the damage they would suffer would be overwhelmingly catastrophic.

Moreover, he was the overall person in charge of this site. There were far too many lives he was responsible for to only consider one person's plight.

"Even if you say so, Inquisitor, this is the one thing I cannot concede. You know his combat power better than anyone, do you not?"

"I am not trying to stop the binding. I am simply asking if we can at least remove the sword pierced into his abdomen."

However, the Inquisitor didn't back down easily. Because she was such an inflexible person, it was even trickier.

She agreed with the seal because there was a history of him going berserk, but she wanted the sword removed because she deemed it 'not right.' How was he supposed to persuade someone like that? It wasn't exactly like she was being unreasonable, either.

"I didn't know he had even pierced himself with a sword... but I did hear that at the very last moment, the Demon Knight diverted the attack of his own volition. And that there were zero casualties outside of the demon worshipers and pirates. I don't believe that was a coincidence."

"I also do not believe it was a coincidence. However..."

"I am not asking you to weaken the binding ritual or release him. I am just asking for the bare minimum of humane treatment. Is even that impossible?"

"... We are still short-handed. May we perform the treatment once the situation stabilizes a bit more?"

"... If it is just that."

In the end, the Archmage decided to concede a step. In truth, he was also uncomfortable with this treatment.

Like how one couldn't exactly scold sacrificing the few for the greater good by saying 'you shouldn't do that,' but couldn't call it right, either.

"In exchange, there is something I would like to ask of you, Inquisitor."

Above all, there was a matter where he needed the Inquisitor's cooperation.

She wasn't the type to refuse his request just because he denied hers, but human relations are smoother when there's a give and take.

"What is it?"

"It is nothing major. It's just that I need your strength, Inquisitor, to hunt down the demons in the city center."

No, was that really all? He just didn't say it aloud, but there were quite a few areas where the Inquisitor's power was needed.

Purifying the tainted land and corpses scattered throughout the city, transporting the people who were still trapped to this location, and clearing the path by dealing with the demons outside the city—all these tasks would only become smooth if the Inquisitor stepped up.

Of course, the Archmage could resolve it to some extent if he stepped up himself, but... unfortunately, there were far more things for him to do.

From consoling the survivors and preparing their food, clothing, and shelter, to requesting supply lines from the rear, rooting out the demon worshipers hiding among the people, deciding the treatment of those who surrendered when defeat seemed imminent, and cleaning up the bodies of the dead demon worshipers, among other things.

Because of that, he had no choice but to entrust the remaining work to the Inquisitor, who had likely already overworked herself conquering this city. They were far too short-handed.

"That is not something you need to ask for. It is what I must naturally do."

"I knew you would say that. However... is it not true that you haven't even rested properly? Only 8 hours have passed since you collapsed."

"It is fine. I am not the only one who hasn't been able to rest. In such a situation, I cannot turn a blind eye to my duty."

"Is that so."

"Yes. The Demon Knight would have done the same."

The Archmage looked at the person who still shined brightly even after having her hair chopped off once again.

While he thought it was fortunate she wasn't trying to cast the Demon Knight out because of this incident, her excessive reverence toward the Demon Knight was starting to worry him.

Because he didn't know where that admiration might ricochet if the Demon Knight failed to wake up.

"You must not overexert yourself."

"Do not worry. I have no intention of pushing myself too hard. I know that proceeding step-by-step will save more people than if I were to collapse."

"... Those are very correct words."

However, even if that were to happen, the Inquisitor would not lose her way. No, from the start, the thought that the Demon Knight wouldn't wake up didn't even cross her mind.

Inevitably, he also trusted that man.

"... Come to think of it, where did the Thief go?"

Then for a moment, the Inquisitor, who looked like she was about to leave, turned back around. It was a question she was bound to ask.

It was just that the answer was awkward to give.

"Ah, he is... doing a task I assigned him."

"Is that so? Then do you also know where he is?"

"... I am not entirely sure, but why are you looking for him?"

Technically, the task the Archmage assigned to the Thief was not something the Inquisitor would be pleased with.

She would understand if he explained the circumstances, but the distance between the two would widen. They had barely just gotten close recently, so there was no need to ruin that.

He feigned ignorance.

"That is..."

Then, on the contrary, the Inquisitor made a face as if at a loss for an answer. The Archmage tried guessing why that was.

"B-Because I need to say thank you."

The answer came quickly. A helplessly warm smile surfaced on the Archmage's face.

"I see. However, the task I requested of him is extremely covert, so I recommend you do not look for him right now, Inquisitor. He hasn't left the city, so how about... conveying it later, after he has finished what he needs to do?"

"I understand. Very well."

Separately, he still couldn't let them meet.

"Then I shall get going."

"I leave it to you."

He waved his hand lightly to see the Inquisitor off. And when the Inquisitor was far enough away, he turned his head back to his work.

"Archmage! There is a problem with the safe zone barrier!"

"Over here first! We discovered items and data developed by the demon worshipers! It appears to be research on mutant zombies and cursed urns!"

... Well, it wasn't as if he had realized in advance that even more work would come pouring in.

Probably.

* * *

While the Archmage was plagued by his work, Deathbringer hid himself in an alleyway. It was for the mission the Archmage had entrusted to him.

["I'm sorry."]

However, that didn't necessarily mean he was entirely focused on the mission either.

He leaned his body against the wall and chewed over his memories. Over the image of the man tightly bound and currently having seals stacked upon him, the eyelashes bathed in the breaking dawn and the dim, sparkling gray eyes beneath them continuously overlapped.

["I'm really sorry."]

Could there be an apology in the world that felt so disconnected? Was it possible to have a transformation as unsuited as the phrase 'glorious death,' yet not feel awkward at all?

Deathbringer's feelings became complicated whenever he recalled that moment.

The Demon Knight at that time was definitely not a demon... but at the same time, it felt like he wasn't the man he knew, either. If it had been the Demon Knight he knew, he would have left behind a stoic word instead of such a gentle apology.

But despite that, why didn't that subtle sense of incongruity hit him as a complete mismatch?

Perhaps it was because that smiling face looked so utterly harmless.

I will never hurt you. I'm sorry for giving you scars. Because it was a smile that conveyed those sentences flawlessly through expression alone, so...

And yet.

He couldn't do anything for him. For the sole reason that he lacked the strength, honor, and power to make others follow him.

"Hah..."

He couldn't bring himself to lay down the collapsed man, and because of his awkward posture, he couldn't even treat him.

He couldn't even get a word in edgewise against the Bishop who was jumping up and down insisting he must be killed—thanks to the man deliberately ignoring him—and when the seal was decided after the Archmage barely managed to persuade them, he had even less of a voice.

Even his plea to at least pull out the sword fell on completely deaf ears.

He was powerless.

Just like how he couldn't resist a single time the moment the Demon Knight tried to kill him.

"Damn it."

THUD.

Deathbringer rested his head against the wall, overwhelmed by the pent-up resentment that surged every time he thought of it.

A shallow sense of self-loathing settled in a corner of his mind and waved its hand. It was an emotion he had never felt before joining this journey.

Indeed, before being with them, he was technically someone positioned on the 'predator' side.

He only lacked honor and power; when the night and silence were with him, he could exist as the executioner of all kinds of trash, so it was definitely true.

But now? While gathering information and grasping the truth were among his talents, he could not exist as an executioner.

When he decided to travel with them, he thought he could do it if he tried... but that was a complete delusion.

The world they lived in and his world were completely different.

It wasn't that he could kill them because they were human, but rather that he could only kill those who were human.

"Fucking hell, why did things turn out like this?"

Then, for a moment, a sound that shattered his idle thoughts came from outside the alleyway he was hiding in.

The lethargy that had been creeping up to soak his brain was instantly suppressed, and cold rationality focused his five senses. He concentrated on his assigned mission.

"Keep it down, if you don't want to die."

"Damn it. I didn't think the demon worshipers would get beaten..."

Melting into the shadows, he listened to their conversation.

The complaints of those cleaning up the corpses lining the castle and moving the rubble of the collapsed buildings were truly endless.

"We didn't even get to properly enjoy ourselves!"

"We kept our lives, at least. That's something."

"True, but..."

As for their identity, they were the pirates who had followed the demon worshipers, only to surrender like ghosts the moment they lost.

Selling out their hometown and throwing up the white flag when they thought they were going to lose—they were a two-piece combo of traitors and turncoats.

"Just hurry up and move this stuff. They might kill us if we don't work right."

If one asked why such unrecyclable trash was still alive even though the main force had arrived, well.

The answer was that there were too many surviving pirates to step forward and execute them all. To the point where the main force would have to brace themselves for considerable damage if they tried to kill them all.

"You think they'd really kill us? Do you know how many of us there are?"

Thus, to buy time for additional reinforcements to arrive, the Archmage negotiated a temporary truce with a false bait—a pardon—just as he had done in the past... and decided to use them as manual labor since he was keeping them alive anyway.

"Besides, we're doing the work they told us to do! They can't kill us after all this!"

The result was idiots like the two guys passing by right now.

Idiots who didn't even consider the sins they had committed, confident that 'We surrendered, and we're even doing some hard labor as told, so we get to live!'

"If worse comes to worst, we can just grab the civilians as hostages and run away."

There were even bastards with thoughts like that.

They were truly laughable fools. Preparing an escape route in advance was indeed the wise thing to do, but with what shamelessness were they planning an escape route? Even dying obediently wouldn't be enough to pay for their crimes.

The Archmage was right to expect this and request observation and surveillance.

Truly malicious bastards were prone to genuinely believing that others were the problem, even when they were the ones in the wrong.

"We're banned from going near where the civilians are, though."

"It's fine. A few guys I know are hiding there. We can just make them grab the hostages for us."

"They sure are fucking quick on the uptake. When did they hide?"

"Don't know. Probably slipped in quietly when those pale-faced bastards were going around saving people."

"Damn it, I should've done that too."

Like how they confessed out of their own mouths, pretending to be the very civilians they had slaughtered just to survive.

"Unfortunately..."

However, when it came to things like this, he, and the Thieves who had come with him, were a step ahead.

"You've all been caught."

Because the pirates who had hidden among the civilians were mostly already rooted out.

What they were currently looking for were the instigators of discontent who could whip up a frenzy and lead a riot in an emergency. The situation was already precarious; there was no need to keep those who could light the fuse of a time bomb alive.

Therefore, those guys were also targets to be eliminated.

Deathbringer firmly crammed the information into his mind and reached for his waist. It took him a half beat to realize that his kukri had been smashed to pieces by the Demon Knight's hands.

"Hmm."

It was a pity, but it didn't matter. It wasn't a weapon he particularly cherished anyway... and he could kill a person even without a weapon.

Since he had spent nearly half of his not-so-long life engaging in such acts.

"That stubborn brick wall would faint if she knew..."

At that point, Deathbringer realized one thing.

It was true that he was of no help in battles between superhumans... but culling like this was impossible for the Demon Knight, the Hero, and the Archmage. It was only possible for him.

"But so what."

And because only he could do it, he couldn't be left out of this party. He didn't want to hear any nagging, so he would keep it a secret from the Hero, but anyway.

Deathbringer perked up his ears, feeling noticeably better than before.

The goal was simple. To eliminate all of them in advance so that the Demon Knight wouldn't have any extra work to do when she woke up.

"Ah, it's been a while since I've taken out the trash."

It was the moment the name granted to only a very select few in the Information Guild, the Deathbringer, descended upon the city.

The time for the wicked to be judged had arrived.

* * *

"...?"

"Is something wrong?"

"Hmm... It's just that I thought I heard a scream."

However, this area behind them was a section where the Mages had blocked off demons from entering by erecting a barrier.

Since it was hastily put together, it could be breached if even a small group of demons gathered, but in exchange, it was structured so that the Mages would notice if the barrier broke.

If a demon had really breached the barrier and killed someone, there was no way it would be this quiet.

"I didn't hear anything, though..."

"Yes, it must be my imagination."

So she must have just misheard. To begin with, it wasn't a 'kyah' sort of scream, but more of an 'urgh'... like the sound of wind deflating.

"Could it be that you are feeling uncomfortable somewhere..."

"That is not it."

It was true that she had sprinted all the way here without a proper rest since arriving on this land, but that applied to everyone. Even considering she had suffered the most by standing on the frontlines, she did not want to step back.

"More importantly, prepare yourselves. I spot a demon."

Instead, she raised her weapon to deal with the demons and worshipers left in the city center. Just then, she saw a gargoyle hiding in the city's shadows.

"Please do not overdo it."

"This much is fine."

She couldn't say her physical condition was perfect, but she wasn't incapable of controlling her body, nor was she unable to draw up her divine power. It was just that her available maximum limit had temporarily decreased.

"I will go alone."

Still, dealing with the remaining stragglers didn't require her usual maximum output.

The Inquisitor adjusted her prayers to prevent an overload. An aura of less than an eighth of what she had used when facing the Demon Knight seeped into her body.

A slight heat was added to her unhealed muscle aches.

"Are you sure you are okay? It hasn't even been long since you woke up..."

"I am truly alright."

It was true that divine power caused pain to its user, but in reality, as long as it wasn't used excessively, it usually stopped at feeling like the onset of a bad cold.

For her, who could endure pain intense enough to cloud her mind, this much didn't even require patience. Thinking of the Demon Knight, who must be fighting a life-or-death struggle against the demon while wrapped in layers of seals, she couldn't afford to be a crybaby even more so.

The Inquisitor firmly shut down their concerns and stepped forward alone.

SKREEE!

But perhaps because she had no talent for sneaking up on things. The gargoyle ended up waking up.

At that moment, she briefly thought of the Thief. He had even managed to take the back of a Great Demon, so if it were him, he would have moved without being caught by this thing either.

A brief pang of envy surfaced, but quickly scattered.

Though she lacked the talent to walk stealthily, this was actually more comfortable for her. Furthermore, there was something she wanted to test.

"Hup!"

The Inquisitor swung her mace at the creature that dropped to the ground and bared its fangs at her. CRASH. The ground in front of her convulsed from the mace's strike.

KIEEEEEK!

The gargoyle hastily tried to fly up, but attempting flight from ground that had suddenly caved in was impossible. The divine power that shot out from the mace and flowed through the earth swept over the gargoyle's position.

"Amazing...!"

"To think such a thing is possible..."

The Priests and Heresy Inquisitors behind her gasped in shock. It wasn't something incomprehensible.

Even within the Order that boasted a long history, there was no one who used divine power in such a manner. More precisely, it was probably that there had been no need to use it like this.

"Hero, that is..."

"It is nothing much."

"It's a new way of using it. Incredible."

Indeed, divine power was an energy specialized in protection, blessings, and healing.

Moreover, those who possessed a great amount of divine power tended to advance toward becoming Priests who could heal people and purify the land, rather than becoming Heresy Inquisitors.

There was no way Heresy Inquisitors, who were already stretched thin just blessing and protecting their own bodies, could develop such a technique. This was entirely possible only because she was a Heresy Inquisitor capable of wielding abnormal levels of divine power.

And even for her, she had only managed to conceive the idea after watching what the Demon Knight did and pondering, 'Could I not do that too?'

"If honed well... it will become a massive weapon."

"I think so too."

But not right now. It consumed far too much divine power and had not yet been fully formalized.

She needed to get the hang of it by testing it out more in a variety of ways. Through this incident, she had intensely realized far too many of her own shortcomings.

"If you ever need assistance, please let us know at any time."

"I appreciate your kindness."

Constantly estimating the amount she could realistically expend, the Inquisitor stepped forward once more.

Understandably so, as aside from helping others, she had one more reason why she could not afford to collapse.

"There's a demon over there too!"

"Kill it. And one of you, please head into the red-roofed house over there. There should be a person inside. If you tell them we returned after killing the dragon, they will understand."

"Understood."

Most of the Priests, including the Bishop, felt terror toward the Demon Knight. And if she overexerted herself and collapsed once again... they might sentence him to death simply on the grounds that there was no one left to stop him.

Even with her strict orders, that remained true. The title of Hero was merely advantageous for persuading the members of the Order; it did not make her their superior.

If they chose to ignore her request, she would have no way to stop them.

She had to prevent that, at the very least.

Therefore, the Inquisitor suppressed her impatience and pressed forward step-by-step. Even though she hadn't taken a proper rest, pacing herself as she advanced made the accumulating fatigue somewhat bearable.

At this pace, she would be able to completely clean up the city and rescue the people by tomorrow morning.

Furthermore, if this was achieved before the Demon Knight woke up... she might be able to stand guard in front of his seal.

If that happened, the Bishop wouldn't be able to easily try and harm him under the excuse that there was no one to stop him.

Her green eyes gleamed, having secured a perfect objective.

It was right after that when demons began to completely disappear from the city.

The days began to pass in a relentless blur.