There was no time to agonize. Every second counted. I bolted out of the house and headed for the temple with no plan at all. Luckily it was late at night. All I had to do was take advantage of the empty grounds, destroy the statue, and come back, or so I convinced myself.
But the moment I reached the temple, I had to scrap that first plan. Of all nights, there was a religious festival being held. The front courtyard where the statue stood was packed shoulder to shoulder with worshippers. Since the Third Prince was in attendance, there were not only ordinary citizens but knights stationed as well. A sweet hymn tickled the night air.
This is maddening.
If I blended into the crowd pretending to be an ordinary human, I could watch for an opening and smash the statue quickly. Given that demons have far greater grip strength than humans, breaking it apart bare-handed was entirely doable. And with such a throng already gathered around the statue, no one would find anything strange about one more body in it.
But if I did that, the fragments would rain down on the citizens. At this distance a lot of people would definitely get hurt. With bad luck, there could be deaths. That was the line I’d decided not to cross.
“Bring up a window so I can check my stats and skills.”
Before I’d even finished speaking, the familiar system window appeared.
Shane (half-demon, age 125)
Stats (□/10) Strength 5 Magic 3 Resistance 7 Agility 8 Accuracy 5
Skills Innate skills: Flame Lv. 1 Stealth Lv. 1 Disguise Lv. 1
The word “Disguise” caught my eye. Maybe because I was at the very start of the game, the level was only 1. A perfect disguise was impossible at that level. It couldn’t change my appearance, only hide my real face.
Still, even a level 1 skill had its uses. With Disguise active, people could look right at my face and fail to register what it looked like. They could read my expression, could see my eyes and lips moving, and yet they couldn’t perceive that I was a suspicious-looking man with ashen hair and red eyes. Seeing a bare face and still being unable to identify it. Even at level 1 the function was excellent, and it was a skill I’d relied on constantly while playing.
Something clicked and turned over in my head.
Ah, right. I’ve got it.
A way to pull the people away from the statue. A way to destroy it safely, with no casualties.
I just had to make them run.
Not from the statue. From me.
I fiddled with the blood-red pendant, the symbol of a corps commander.
Third Prince Damian gave the choir a heartfelt round of applause. Little children who didn’t even come up to his chest, carrying a song with such lovely voices, made for a truly beautiful sight. He felt that the time and effort he’d poured into the event hadn’t gone to waste.
People laughed and chattered and praised the goddess with real sincerity. It wasn’t the solemn, hushed atmosphere people usually picture when they hear the word temple, but Damian believed the Goddess of Dawn would enjoy a festival this full of life. Surely this was what living faith looked like.
After the hymn came the offering rite. A white ox was placed on the altar. Not a real one. An elaborately crafted effigy. On the grounds that no innocent life could be sacrificed in a rite offered to a benevolent goddess, the empire had long used models in place of actual animals.
Human rites were unlike those of the demons. Their moral baseline differed from that of a race that carried out soul offerings without a qualm in order to resurrect the Demon King. Damian was proud of that fact.
The high priest approached the altar carrying a scarlet torch. And at the very moment he went to set the offering alight,
a wind blew in from somewhere. At the same time every flame went out. The high priest’s torch, the lamps lighting the temple, all of them died at once. As though someone had cut off the world’s breath in a single stroke, the temple sank into total darkness.
A brief silence passed. Then the offering abruptly burst into flame. Fire of a black, murky, ominously deep color swallowed the white ox. It was nothing like the color of fire people knew. Flames laced with wicked demonic energy burned that black. The blaze wavered as if screaming and reduced the offering to ash in an instant.
The festival grounds turned into pandemonium in a heartbeat. People screamed, and in the blind dark they collided with one another and fell as they searched for the exits. Children’s crying tangled with adults’ shouting, and the terror amplified.
“Everyone, calm down! Mage, light!”
Damian shouted as calmly as he could manage. Soon a mage chanted and produced an orb of light. A faint but unmistakable glow lit the surroundings.
The first thing revealed was the altar. The black fire had scorched not only the offering but the marble altar itself. The white stone charred into ugliness was a ghastly sight. Sighs escaped the crowd, no one first among them.
The mage made another orb and sent it up into the air. When the light shone above, the statue of the Goddess of Dawn, who always looked down on her worshippers with such love, came into view. And on the shoulder of that enormous statue, someone was sitting.
The figure was swinging one leg playfully. As if all this uproar were merely part of a dull festival.
Its face couldn’t be seen. Or rather, to put it precisely, the face was fully bare and yet its features couldn’t be made out. That you couldn’t tell what he looked like when he wasn’t even wearing a mask brought on an instinctive dread of the unknown. It felt like the eyes and the brain were working separately. At the very least, one could just barely confirm that he was a tall, well-built man of roughly human shape.
Damian quickly took in the figure’s clothing. A black uniform buttoned tight up to the throat, leather gloves in the same color. Apart from the barely exposed wrists and ankles, and a face he couldn’t perceive at all, everything about the man was pitch-black. A jet-black cloak streamed in the wind, flapping like a devil’s wings.
Damian’s gaze stopped at one point. A pendant hung at the cloak’s left shoulder. A gem of a red so vivid it was the color of blood, with an eerie eye pattern engraved inside it. The symbol of a demon corps commander.
“D-Demon! It’s a demon!”
someone shrieked.
The clerics took command of the citizens quickly. They lined the ordinary townsfolk up and evacuated them out of the temple. They supported the weeping and the shouting and pulled them out, reciting prayers to settle their hearts. In a matter of minutes the courtyard was all but empty. What remained were a handful of clerics and the knights ringing the goddess’s statue.
The knights drew their swords as one. The air hardened with tension. No one dared move rashly. They all glared at the figure seated on the statue’s shoulder.
Even in that hair’s-breadth situation, the corps commander was perfectly at ease. He planted a foot on the statue’s shoulder, stood, and looked down. The white statue and the black demon. A strange composition in which god and devil overlapped.
Damian’s hands trembled. Fear lifted its head in his chest. Prince or not, he was still an adolescent of only sixteen. What stood before the youngest prince was a demon corps commander who must have swept up countless lives on the battlefield. He clenched his teeth and swallowed down the instinct to run.
Damian took a step forward and called out, putting everything he had into keeping his voice from shaking.
“Do you know where you’ve walked into? This is no place for a wicked thing like you to set foot so carelessly. And climbing onto the statue, no less. You’ll pay for that insolence with your life!”
The corps commander let out a short laugh. There was no fear in it, no tension. He spoke with the ease of an adult soothing a child.
“If climbing on the statue is a capital offense, then how big a crime is breaking it? Should I die about a hundred times? What a shame. Unfortunately I’ve only got the one life.”
“What? Break the... statue?”
Damian’s face stiffened.
The corps commander gave a gentle warning.
“Careful you don’t get hurt, kid.”
He kicked the statue’s shoulder with everything he had. That was the beginning.
The statue of the goddess Repinal, the temple’s pride, which had stood in that spot for centuries looking down over the empire, lurched precariously. Cracks ran across its face and torso. He kicked at it once more, laughing like a child at play with a ball.
Crash! With an ear-splitting roar, the statue came down.
The crown on her head, the hand raised in elegance, the delicately sculpted hem of her skirt. The elements that had made up a goddess collapsed in an instant and poured onto the ground. Marble fragments fell like a downpour and battered the altar, and sharp shards scraped the floor and leapt. What rang through that sacred space was neither prayer nor hymn, but the sound of destruction.
The goddess’s head struck the ground and broke. Her eyes and mouth split apart. That gentle face rolled facedown. A knight holding a spear swallowed a startled cry, and one elderly cleric staggered and sank limply to the ground. Years upon years of faith were trampled in a single moment.
Fortunately, the ordinary citizens had already been evacuated far away. And the knights who remained were seasoned warriors. They managed, one way or another, to dodge the falling debris.
The problem was Damian. The marble piece of the goddess’s hand plunged straight down toward him. They say the body freezes in the face of overwhelming terror. Damian didn’t even think to dodge. He simply stared blankly up at his oncoming death. A knight belatedly ran to shield him, but the stone was falling faster.
And in that moment,
“Hey, Your Highness. I told you to be careful, didn’t I?”
A strangely affectionate voice brushed his ear. Crushed under fear the first time, he hadn’t noticed, but the demon’s voice was very pleasant to listen to. A steady, fine voice, neither too low nor too rough.
Damian was unharmed. The stone had stopped right above his head. Thanks to the demon corps commander holding the goddess’s massive hand up with one of his own.
“Hup.”
The commander set the hefty slab down to one side far too easily.
Damian caught his breath and asked in a shaking voice,
“Wh-Why did you save me?”
The commander stared quietly at Damian for a beat, then burst out laughing. Then, instead of giving an answer, he asked one back.
“Why do you think?”
That arrogant attitude, the one that said he had no intention of answering foolish questions. Damian soon found the reason. In a way, it was too obvious. The reason a demon had saved him, it was...
“You’re keeping me alive until I’m fully grown so you can offer my soul to the Demon King when the time comes, aren’t you? Because a mature royal’s soul is worth more...!”
The commander didn’t answer right away this time either. He drew the pause out like a practiced storyteller, and when Damian’s nerves had wound to their very peak, he grinned and snapped his fingers.
“...Correct.”
The blood drained from Damian’s face. The knights hurriedly moved to protect the prince and leveled their swords at the enemy. Every blade tip turned toward him at once.
The commander flicked his fingertips lightly. A pitch-black flame opened its mouth and gulped down the orbs of light the mage had raised. The world sank into complete darkness again. Only breathing and footsteps, scattered off-beat, overlapped in confusion.
“Goddess, grant us light-!”
The mage rushed through an incantation. When the area lit up once more, the corps commander was nowhere to be seen. All that remained was the shattered statue of the goddess and a thick terror that squeezed the throat.
“Ah, aah...”
Damian’s legs gave out, and he sank to the ground where he stood.
