This wasn’t the original plan. I hadn’t the slightest intention of revealing that I was a demon in front of the children. The plan was to knock all the trash out first, free the kids, and then rush through the soul offering once there were no eyes on me. Then dump the husks the souls had left behind somewhere with no people around.
That way the incident would wrap up cleanly. This was supposed to be the good deed of an unidentified righteous man, not a corps commander.
That’s why I deliberately didn’t use my flame ability in the fight. I dialed my combat skill way down, too. What the witnesses saw had to be a suspicious but nonetheless human being.
The plan was rolling along well enough. All the trouble started when one piece of trash put a knife to an innocent child’s throat. I could have subdued him with swordsmanship. But if my timing was off by even a little, there was a chance the child would get hurt.
So I had no choice but to subdue him another way. Soul offering. I picked the fastest, surest, and simultaneously most horrifying option.
The result was what I’d expected. My identity as a demon was exposed instantly, and the situation turned into chaos. Still, thanks to that, the criminals’ mental fortitude collapsed rapidly, and offering their souls actually got easier.
I stored all the dangerous drugs using the game’s inventory function. It was a relief that the storage feature from the game worked exactly the same in reality. These drugs would never make it back out into the world.
The children must have thought their souls would be offered up next, because they were crying for their mothers or calling the goddess’s name. I hadn’t wanted to plant trauma in little kids.
I checked each child’s condition. Whites of eyes shot through with burst capillaries, dark shadows settled beneath them. Hands stained with the drugs, and the fine trembling in their legs from the addiction. This was a problem that had to be solved right now.
I opened the shop and searched for an item to treat patients.
〈Addiction Recovery Candy, 13 pieces (apple flavor)〉 200p Don’t eat a lot just because it’s tasty! No more, no less, exactly one each.
Using part of the points I’d just received for the soul offering, I bought the item. Candies wrapped in aurora-colored foil came pouring out of the air. The effect was a bit excessive, but it was more than enough to catch the children’s attention.
“It’s all right. Eat these, one each.”
I said it with a kind smile.
The children picked the candies up with trembling hands. With eyes full of wariness and fear, they unwrapped them and put them carefully into their mouths. It was plain on their faces that they were eating only because they’d been told to.
The effect was immediate. Color returned to their faces and the stains vanished from their hands. Their breathing, so thin it seemed about to cut out, steadied too. Startled, the children looked at their newly clean hands over and over.
Urgent footsteps came from the floor above. The Sanctuary Guard. Shasha’s voice came with them.
“It’s down here! I’m sure of it.”
I didn’t add another word. To watch how things unfolded, I hid myself with Stealth.
I hope this day doesn’t stay in your memories as a nightmare you can’t get past.
Holding on to that small hope.
Shasha, the apothecary with curly brown hair and grass-colored eyes. Her narrative in the game went like this.
Running a small potion workshop with her parents, Shasha had taken part in the Guard’s activities whenever she had a spare moment, to protect the village’s safety. In the course of that she learns that a drug syndicate is behind the serial disappearances of children, and that becomes the impetus for throwing herself in earnest into researching a cure.
After that she fights the Demon King’s army, brewing potions for soldiers in the middle of the battlefield. The epithet she picks up in the process is “the Saintess of the Battlefield.” Just as the outstanding healer Rihen was called the Saint, Shasha too was more than qualified to be called a Saintess.
But that was a matter for some later day. Right now she was standing rigid with shock. She’d heard everything the children said and still couldn’t organize the situation in her head. No, it was closer to refusing to organize it.
That a corps commander had appeared and taken all the drugs. That fact alone was shocking enough, and on top of it he had handed the victims a cure.
And then Shasha finally realized what his actions meant. A scheme so cruel she would have been better off not knowing.
The commander was skilled in stealth. For him, slipping into a high official’s mansion would be no more than a stroll.
He would slip the drug into their meals and wait until the target was addicted and broken. And then he’d appear again before someone who had lost everything to that addiction, and whisper in a voice as wicked as a snake’s.
Follow my instructions properly and I’ll give you the cure.
No one would be able to write his words off as a bluff. Hadn’t he already proven the cure existed, using little children as his demonstration?
High-ranking officials shaken by a single corps commander. Troop deployments, supply lines, weak points. Without spilling a drop of blood he could extract top-grade military secrets down to the last detail. Beyond that, he might bend the entire political situation however he pleased.
The Thirteenth Corps Commander was no simple butcher. A being who calculated even the manner in which he wielded evil. The kind of enemy the logic of good could never reach.
Shasha clenched her fists. She couldn’t simply be glad that the victims had been rescued safely. The children had lived. But in exchange, the seed of a far greater disaster had fallen into the enemy’s hands.
It was the beginning of a nightmare.
If even one dose of the cure had been left intact, she would have called in the apothecaries and begun research. Analyze the components, reproduce the manufacturing process, perhaps find an alternative.
But there was no cure left. The commander had handed out exactly as many doses as there were kidnapped people, no more. Considering his meticulous nature, it was only to be expected.
Faced with that grim reality, Shasha couldn’t move for a while.
“Shasha, is something wrong?”
A fellow member nudged her. She opened her heavy mouth.
“I think, in all likelihood, the Thirteenth Commander is...”
Shasha told the others her theory, and every one of them agreed with her.
“E-Excuse me...”
A woman who had been quietly listening called out to Shasha with effort. She was one of the two adults rescued that day. Adult or not, she looked barely past twenty. A painfully thin body, rough breathing, ragged clothes. She still looked nothing but frail.
The woman tapped Shasha’s shoulder lightly. Then she placed something in her palm. A candy wrapped in glittering foil.
“It’s the cure. The kids said it tastes like apple.”
the woman said quietly.
“Th-This... isn’t this something you need to take?”
At Shasha’s question the woman shook her head calmly. Then she lowered her gaze as if she were a criminal.
“Even though I’m an adult, I couldn’t be any help to those children. All I did was shake with fear.”
She continued evenly.
“So... now I want to do something adult for the first time. If you research using this medicine, and you find out how to make the cure... then you can stop that commander’s plan, can’t you? Can’t you?”
Shasha looked at the woman without a word, then suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace.
“I promise. I’ll make the cure as fast as I possibly can. So please, hold on just a little longer. Please.”
Shasha’s voice trembled but it was clear. The woman gave herself over to that warmth and smiled in relief.
Shasha wrote down her home address and handed it to the woman. Come anytime you need help. The woman folded the note carefully and put it in her pocket. And then, unsteadily, she went outside for the first time in a very long while.
It was night. Cold, dark, a dangerous hour, but the simple fact that she could breathe outside air made her happy.
From the other direction, a man with his hat pulled low came walking briskly and bumped into her. The woman staggered and nearly fell, and the man hurriedly steadied her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He bowed his head over and over. The woman smiled and told him it was fine. Then she started walking again with no destination in mind.
Her hands were cold. The woman put them in her pockets.
Rustle. Where there should have been only the feel of the note, she felt something else. A candy wrapped in glittering foil. The very cure the commander had handed out.
“...!”
The woman looked all around for the man who had bumped into her. But he had already vanished without a trace.
She tore the wrapper off in a hurry. When she put the candy in her mouth, the fresh taste of green apple wrapped around the tip of her tongue. Tears came pouring out.
In front of others she’d called herself an adult, and she’d pretended she wasn’t afraid to hand over her own dose of the cure. But the truth was, she really wanted to live. She wanted to get better.
The one who had put this candy in her pocket had to be the commander. Of course it couldn’t be pure goodwill. If anything it was closer to a warning. A warning that he had heard every word of their conversation.
I know you handed this candy over instead of eating it, and I know all about your plan to sit around straining to make a cure. No matter how you thrash, you’re in the palm of my hand. That was what the commander was saying, concisely and unmistakably.
And even so... the candy was very sweet.
