Demon – Part 03

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Translator: Kell


As I stepped out of the prison, my feet sank down to my ankles as though I had stepped on mud. Startled, I yanked my feet out, when my nose caught the whiff of a putrid stench, like rotten fish. To put it simply, the smell of blood and corpses.

Jarring laughter came from all directions, like metal grating against metal. From my feet. From the moonless sky.

Readjusting myself, I moved forward, careful not to trip over the blood and mud.

“He’s out. He’s coming out.”

“Powerless fool. There is no warding here.”

“Kill him. Kill him.”

“I’ll pull out his insides and turn them into a necklace.”

“First comes the selection.”

“The selection of the contractor.”

“This is a very walm welcome,” Gouda remarked.

“I can’t see anything even without my eyepatch,” the priest said. “So it’s not exactly dark. More like we’re wrapped in blackness.”

The priest and Gouda came out after me, and Barcel reluctantly pushed the Director’s wheelchair out of the prison.

“You could’ve just stayed inside, you know,” I said.

“You’re kidding, right?” Barcel said. “In this situation, it’s scarier to stay inside alone. I just brought the Director here. Why am I in this mess?!”

“In case you’ve forgotten,” the priest said, “the Director is a demon too. Just having him with us would be reason enough to encounter a threat.”

“Shh.” The Director raised his forefinger to his mouth. “Lower your voice. Hold your breath. It’s coming. The Entombed of the Corroding Black Mist.”

Another overly-dramatic name, huh? I heightened my senses as a presence slowly approached from beyond the veil of darkness.

When a creature with richly-colored hair appeared, I literally held my breath. It was a spider Beastfallen, with eight eyes and venomous body hair covering its whole body.

“I think we need to change the definition of a Beastfallen,” I said.

“I agree. Just because they have hair doesn’t automatically mean they’re beasts.” The priest covered his mouth with his sleeve.

I knew there were snake and insect Beastfallen, but this one was by far the most sinister one. Even the pre-human Director looked better.

Like Raoul, the lower half of his body was that of a spider. While spiders normally had four pairs of legs, this one had six of them as legs and two as arms. It had eight eyes, but its nose and mouth were human, and it even looked like he was wearing a creepy mask from the eyes up.

“The All-Seeing Thousand-Eyed Sentinel, huh? I thought you were terribly bold for showing yourself. No wonder. You already knew our names. Then we can’t be careless.”

He spoke fluently, probably because its mouth was shaped like a human’s. But he moved in an awkward manner, with no facial expression at all. It was like watching a puppet move.

Although considering how much I and the Director struggled to move in our new bodies, even demons might have some difficulty in controlling the body of Beastfallen.

“Director, what’s that demon’s ability?” Gouda asked nervously.

“C-Corrosion,” the Director replied curtly.

“I don’t think I want to hear more about it.”

The Director giggled. “Oh, yes. I-It’s a horrific ability. A-As its name implies, i-it can corrode anything. Everything. I-In the blink o-of an eye.”

“So if it wants to, it can kill us instantly.”

The Director laughed. “D-Do not be afraid. I-I know its name. W-We can bind it. S-Such is the nature of demons.”

“Of course,” the spider guy replied. “We can’t do anything if you know our name. But alas, what about the countless demons gathering here? Ten? Twenty? Or a hundred? Or a thousand? You can see them with your own eyes, Thousand-Eyed Sentinel. Which would be quicker, for you to tell the humans there their names, or for us to kill them?”

I could tell that the priest and the others were looking to escape. The prison was located just outside the warding. If they ran as fast as they could, they should be able to reach the warding in a few seconds. Unfortunately the ground was not firm, almost as if the demons anticipated the situation.

“Well, this is unfortunate.” The priest let out a sigh. “I planned to let Mercenary go alone to avoid this kind of situation.”

“Can’t believe you can be so cruel.”

“Why, of course. If we all die here, we can’t withdraw to Wenias.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Gouda said, “but if we were ambushed by this many demons, the journey would’ve ended in disaster either way.” He gave an awkward smile. “If anything, if we die here, Gemma will think twice about falling back. If they stay inside the wards, at least they’ll be safe. They’ll survive inside the town.”

“Can you not talk like you’ve already accepted death?!” Barcel said. “I don’t want to die just yet.”

There was tension in the air, but they were not nervous. The casual conversation made me feel a little at ease.

I lifted my head and stared at the spider guy. “And yet we’re still alive. That means you’re willing to make a deal.”

The spider guy tilted his head in an awkward motion. “A deal, a deal. Yes, we love deals. We offer and we receive. You wanted a deal, so we came. To find out if you are worthy of being a contractor.”

“You demons can’t get past the wards around the Altar, but I can get in and kill the Murky Darkness Witch. To do that, I need your help to clear out the demons guarding the Altar. All you have to do is open the way for a moment. And then—Ugh!”

A shock ran through my body. Blown back by something, my body slammed onto the prison building behind me, and I fell face-first into the mud.

“Mercenary?!” Gouda and the priest exclaimed.

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what just happened. As the priest tried to help me up, he was also tossed aside. Gouda and Barcel sank into the mud in the blink of an eye.

We couldn’t do anything.

Our defeat was so overwhelming that we could not even crack a joke about it. The Director, sitting deep in his wheelchair, watched us with languid eyes as we lay there astonished.

As I lifted my body up, the spider guy’s arms reached out and grabbed me by the neck. Slowly he pulled me up and lifted me in the air.

For a moment, I wondered how he could be so strong, then I remembered that before I became human, I could do the same, so it wasn’t all that surprising.

If someone grabbed you by the neck and lifted you up, you would definitely feel like your life was in danger. In my case, he was more like holding my chin, so I wasn’t going to choke to death right away.

“Let… me… down!”

“So, you enter the warding, and then what?”

The spider guy’s eight eyes peered into my face at close range as I struggled to escape. His glossy eyes were as eerie and emotionless as his face, like his facial muscles had gone completely rigid.

“You’re weak. We’re not even using our powers. I’m only choking you and you’re already dying. What makes you think you can kill the witch? Didn’t you consider the possibility that you would get killed as soon as you entered the warding?”

I let out a groan as his grip tightened. I couldn’t breathe.

You’ve gotta be kidding. Am I really dying here?

I pulled out a throwing knife from my pocket and stabbed the spider guy’s arm, but his grip showed no signs of loosening.

“Show us. Show us that you’re worthy of a deal. That you’re worthy of our help. That you can kill the witch. If you can’t…”

Die.


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