“Rihen, let’s go to the Temple of Dawn. I want to get another blessing from the cleric.”
Theo’s words left me momentarily speechless. Because I had personally burned that temple down last night.
If we went now, all we’d see was scorched rubble and blackened stone pillars. But the story was that I’d been home with Theo the whole time from last night through this morning. I wasn’t supposed to know the temple had burned yet.
“Sure, let’s go.”
I had no choice but to nod.
When we arrived, Theo’s eyes went wide at the traces of the fire. A faint despair crossed his young face. But that expression didn’t last long. The temple had certainly burned to the ground, and yet the people were still there. Large tents had been set up in a row beside the collapsed building, and inside them people were praying, holding services, and receiving blessings.
Watching that, Theo seemed moved.
Just then Luna spotted us and waved happily. And the moment she saw Theo, her eyes went wide.
“They do say children grow up fast. You’ve grown so much in a few days I hardly recognize you!”
That apprentice cleric had a subtly odd streak in her. Theo straightened up and answered with dignity.
“I was hit with a curse that turned me back to a younger age. Right now I’m in the process of the curse breaking.”
“Ahh, I see.”
Luna nodded, then said kindly,
“Should I ask the high priest what kind of curse it is? It might be possible to break it faster.”
Theo shook his head immediately.
“No, thank you. It isn’t causing me much trouble to live like this. Rihen takes good care of me, so I’m fine. And with the temple in this state, the high priest should be attending to more important things.”
Truly a hero’s answer. Inwardly, I was deeply impressed.
“The temple burned, but people’s faith didn’t.”
I said it while looking at the people praying inside the tents. Luna gazed at them with deep eyes, then nodded.
“The statue was broken, but the goddess still exists.”
Those words lingered in my chest strangely long.
“But who was it that set the fire?”
At Theo’s question, Luna’s face darkened noticeably.
“One of the Demon King’s corps commanders. They say it was probably the Thirteenth.”
She continued in a low voice.
“The temple has a rough idea of what the First through Twelfth Commanders look like, but with this Thirteenth one they say there’s no telling at all. Apparently he uses an ability that keeps you from perceiving his appearance.”
“The Demon King’s...”
Theo clenched his teeth. Anger settled plainly in his golden eyes.
“He did all this to make soul offerings easier, didn’t he? Throwing people into terror to weaken their minds. Once your mental fortitude is worn down, drawing the soul out gets easier.”
Ah, no, I didn’t intend it to go that far...
“I’m sure that’s it.”
Luna nodded.
“He’s an extremely rational and, at the same time, cruel enemy. The type who avoids meaningless slaughter for the sake of the future. They say he’s excessively prudent for a demon.”
I couldn’t react to that at all. So this was what people meant when they said the reading is better than the dream.
Luna soon softened her expression and looked around. People praying beneath the tents, clerics with heads quietly bowed, worshippers standing hand in hand. She broke into a bright smile.
“But that guy was wrong. Look. The faith is intact, and the people have overcome their fear.”
Inside, I quietly swallowed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness the worshippers had strong minds.
That was when it happened. A sudden commotion broke out at one side of the grounds. A woman with neatly braided hair, who looked to be in her mid-thirties, came running to Luna in tears. She seemed short of breath, swallowing her words and sniffling again and again.
“Sylvia? What’s wrong?”
Luna called her name first. Only then did Sylvia pour out her words, her face crumbling.
“Cleric, it’s terrible. My son is gone. He hasn’t come home since yesterday. I heard kidnappings have been frequent lately, and now something this awful has happened to my son too...”
Luna’s expression noticeably hardened. She took Sylvia’s hands firmly in her own and spoke in a calm voice.
“First I’ll inform the clerics of this. And I’ll request a search from the Sanctuary Guard. If you remember anything, please tell me all of it, however small.”
Her tone wasn’t pressing. But it was just as clear that she had no intention of treating the situation lightly. Sylvia wiped her tears and nodded.
“The kids who were playing with him said some man asked him to help carry his things. He had his hat pulled down low, so they couldn’t see his face well.”
The moment I heard that, I understood. This was an event I knew. The Sanctuary Guard, a sort of village watch. Shasha, a good-faction character and one of its members. If you played as her, the very first quest you were given was this serial kidnapping case.
Behind it was an organization that abducted easily handled children and destitute people with no family and forced them to manufacture drugs. Repeat that work long enough and you got addicted to the bad substances, then sickened, coughing blood, and died. Then they’d dump the body and go looking for another victim to fill the empty spot. Trash who saw human beings as nothing but tools.
If it were the souls of men like that...
There’d be no real problem with offering them up.
Their base was the basement of a respectable-looking building disguised as a place of business. From the outside nothing seemed wrong, but go down the hidden staircase and the situation changed.
The entire basement had a soundproofing spell on it. No crying, no screaming, not even the sound of breaking bone leaked outside. A space optimized for imprisoning people.
The children were working inside. Sitting on the bare floor without even chairs, pounding herbs with small hands, mixing powders, rolling them into little balls. The backs of their hands were mottled where the drugs had touched them, and the skin between their fingers was red and raw. No protective gear was provided. If they couldn’t do it properly, a scolding was all it took.
Jeff, one of the gang, was in an especially foul mood today. His head throbbed and his stomach churned. The drugs he’d inhaled that morning had been worse quality than he expected. If they’d made the stuff properly this wouldn’t have happened. The arrow of his resentment turned toward the little kids making it.
He glared at one child whose movements were especially clumsy.
“Hey. Move faster.”
The child shrank back in fear, but his hands stayed slow.
“Is he out of his damn mind?”
Jeff raised his hand. In the instant before it came down, someone who had approached without a sound caught him by the wrist. Jeff flinched and turned his head. A man with a black robe pulled low over his face was standing there.
“What the fuck?”
Before he finished speaking, his wrist twisted. The strength was monstrous. The sensation of a joint bending the wrong way came through with perfect clarity.
“Ah, aaargh!”
Jeff’s scream rang through the basement. Thanks to the soundproofing spell, the sound circled inside that place alone.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“Jeff?”
The other members, scattered around, converged all at once on the source of the sound. They came at the intruder with clubs and knives.
The man didn’t so much as draw a weapon. He cracked his fist across their faces and kicked at their solar plexuses with those long legs. Incoming blades he batted away bare-handed, or caught in his grip and turned aside. His movements were graceful and efficient. It felt less like a fight than like simple tidying up.
One by one the gang members went sprawling. The kidnapped people didn’t understand the situation exactly, but they could at least sense instinctively that the man was on their side.
“Hah... who the hell are you...?”
Jeff clenched his teeth and got up. He grabbed the chair behind him and raised it toward the back of the man’s head.
“Look out! Behind you-!”
The child who had been praying with clasped hands for the man’s safety shouted. As though he’d anticipated that sort of attack long ago, the man turned his body with total ease. The chair cut through empty air instead of his head, and Jeff took a kick to the stomach. He flew up and slammed his back into the wall.
“Are you one of the village watch?”
Another member bellowed. He had hold of a scrawny boy. A blade turned toward the boy’s throat.
“Playing at being some pathetic hero? Surrender right now, or this boy dies.”
Even with everyone swallowing hard from the tension, the man in the black robe was at ease. He opened his mouth for the first time. His languid voice was pleasant to listen to.
“And why do you think I’d care about the life of some brat?”
Those few words threw the man into a panic. That the hostage he’d gone to the trouble of taking held no value at all planted a nauseating fear in him.
The man waved a hand lightly. With that one gesture, a small fissure opened in the air. At first it looked like a hairline crack. But the gap widened quickly and turned into the mouth of a bottomless pit. Something resembling a starving maw tore itself open. Nothing could be seen inside. A complete void with neither light nor volume.
The dagger fell from the gang member’s hand. Something like white mist slipped out of the chest of a man whose mind had collapsed under extreme fear. It was his soul. The intruder moved his hand as if pulling the mist toward him. Without a single act of resistance, the soul was sucked into the black fissure.
Everyone in that place realized it. The intruder was not human. Soul offering was an act only demons could perform.
“D-Don’t tell me... a demon?”
“Slow on the uptake.”
The man whispered it mockingly and threw off his robe. A black uniform, and the red pendant that marked a corps commander. His face was clearly uncovered, and still no one could perceive what he looked like. There was only one demon with that trait.
The Thirteenth Corps Commander of the Demon King’s army.
But... for what reason had the man who smashed a statue and burned a temple personally graced a crime syndicate’s basement with his presence?
“C-Comm-Commander, why are you here...?”
“Spare me, please, spare me. If you’ll just let me live I’ll do anything. L-Long live the Demon King!”
All eleven of the gang members had already lost their senses. The commander let their begging go in one ear and out the other. Souls were sucked into the wide-open fissure. Men who had been wailing hideously, streaming tears and snot, dropped as shabbily as puppets with their strings cut.
In an instant it was over. The commander turned his head toward where the kidnapped victims were. Ten children, and two adults who had probably come from the slums. Every one of them was sitting on the floor, shaking. The bravest among them, a girl, took one step forward.
“Why... why did you come here? For what?”
The commander didn’t answer. Instead he opened the door of a safe in the corner of the basement. He’d applied only a little force, and the solid iron door crumpled like paper. Inside, dark purple drugs were piled high.
Things the children had made. The product of ruining children’s bodies and gnawing away at their souls.
He stood before it and made a small gesture. A drawer surfaced in midair, and the piles of drugs were drawn into it one after another. To anyone watching, an advanced storage spell. In reality, the inventory function the game provided as standard.
That action became an answer clearer than words.
As was all too obvious, the commander had not come to rescue the kidnapped. His objective had been the drugs from the start. A highly addictive substance that scrambled the human mind. And it had fallen into the grip of a demon corps commander.
It was the worst possible turn of events.
