Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Lord II

There was no chirping of insects, no birdsong.

Within the tranquil and beautiful manor, all the boy could feel was silence, silence pressed to the very edge of suffocation.

The moment he set foot in the courtyard, Amy was seized by a powerful sense of déjà vu. Though his eyes found nothing but lush flowers, plants, and trees, the eerie stillness around him drove his vigilance to its utmost. Only a few days earlier, in just such an empty quiet, he had encountered the most terrifying enemy he had faced so far, apart from the black sorcerer Alfred.

Whether it was the vast body as immense as mountains and seas, or the tens of millions of lesser servant races, both had deeply impressed upon him just how dreadful a higher demon truly was. Perhaps it was a matter of affinity, but neither the indestructible murder maniac he had just encountered, nor the information broker who could conceal his demonic nature and awaken into draconic form, had given him the same sensation: the oppressive feeling of a human standing before an invincible foe like earth, mountains, oceans, or the sky.

And now, once again entering such a silent place, his heart could not help but stir.

"Mia, that monster we ran into underground—was it also a lord?" the Glory-Bearer asked, though he felt no fear. Indeed, against demons of such terrifying size, he was lacking in methods, but the lower district was not the same as the Irdan mines. The difference in environment alone made it impossible for anything so enormous, so conspicuous, to be born here.

Yet the instant he turned his head, his expression changed.

Like a wax figure baked by flame, the girl’s profile as she looked back at him began to melt. Her emerald eyes slid down with the dissolving flesh, dragging out great swathes of nauseating tendrils.

"What is it?" she asked.

Her voice seemed to drift from very far away, blurred and intermittent.

"Nothing..." The Glory-Bearer forced back his disgust and nausea. "Nothing at all."

Indeed, nothing at all. There were only two possible explanations for the present situation: either the sword-bearer had, without his noticing, been replaced by some monster, or had been corrupted and fallen; or else everything before his eyes was illusion, some grotesquely distorted scene.

As for which of those two possibilities was closer to the truth, the boy had already reached his conclusion.

To quietly replace Mia, or to pollute and corrupt her? What a joke. If the enemy possessed that sort of power, the lower district would already have been Michelangelo's private kingdom, and there would be no talk of the "Three Pillars of the Foundation"—so long as no extremely rare event had occurred, or the enemy did not possess some obscure, bizarre, and bizarrely specialized ability, then the root of the problem must lie with him.

Either his vision was being affected by something, or his mind had been tainted. What he did not yet know was whether, in the girl's eyes, he too had become some unspeakable monster. If so, considering how deeply she despised demons, the odds of her raising her sword against him were not small.

He would have to prepare in advance.

So he opened his mouth. "Mia—"

But before the word could fully leave him, it was swallowed by the shrieking wind of a sword. Before the Glory-Bearer could react, a razor-sharp pressure grazed past the bridge of his nose, and then... something slick as jelly slid down both sides of his face. In the next instant, the world brightened—along with it, the girl before him returned to normal.

"What was that?" the Glory-Bearer asked, touching his cheek.

"An unfamiliar species." The sword-bearer sheathed her blade, then crouched to pick up the remains split in two—a mass of perfectly transparent gelatinous matter, soft to the touch and extremely smooth, like a lump of water thickened to a certain degree, or the premium slime merchants sold to children as toys. Having confirmed the demon's true nature, she lifted her head and regarded the boy with emerald-bright eyes. "What did you see?"

"Well..." Amy awkwardly rubbed his nose and chose a tactful answer. "It seems to have the power to create illusions."

He couldn't exactly tell a beautiful woman of suitable age, Sorry, in my eyes you turned into a monster. Though Mia did not seem like the kind of girl who would care, saying it aloud still felt inappropriate.

"Be careful." After a brief pause, the girl offered her advice. "Stay calm."

The boy nodded to show he understood, then followed in the sword-bearer's footsteps, keeping a wary eye on his surroundings while gathering intelligence from her. "Can you sense the enemy's exact location? This place may not be large, but there are plenty of places to hide."

The sword-bearer shook her head.

"Then for now, let's designate the Mask as the hypothetical enemy," Amy suggested. The girl, naturally, did not refuse. "As one of Emperor Michelangelo's right-hand men, the lord of the lower district's shadows, he should be staying in the mansion of the giant Paul at the moment. Let's go there first and see what we find. If we're wrong, we'll make other plans. How does that sound?"

"All right."

Mia did not object. For the two of them, who lacked a clear objective, it was a plan worth trying.

"Follow me." Paul's mansion was not large, but the manor grounds were extensive, and with the crisscrossing paths and dense forest, avoiding wrong turns was no easy matter. Fortunately, the boy knew the place at least somewhat. "Watch the grass on both sides, and the shade of the trees overhead."

He did not choose the nearest route, but the broadest and safest avenue.

Perhaps because they were cautious, or perhaps because the master of the place had already discovered them, they were not attacked again along the way. Only when the magnificent turreted building came into view did the two of them stop at the same time.

"Here it is." The boy looked toward the sword-bearer beside him. Perhaps the blood of the ancients within him was too浓厚, for he could not sense the pressure of a higher demon at all. Thus he could only place his hopes of finding the enemy on the girl at his side. "Can you feel it? The aura of a higher demon?"

"Hard to say." Mia frowned slightly, her brow beautiful as a painting. "It feels like one, and yet not."

"Hmm..." After a meaningless filler sound, Amy paused briefly and spread his hands. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"Not very much like it." A puzzled expression appeared on the sword-bearer's lovely face. "Needs confirmation."

"Then let's confirm it now," the Glory-Bearer said, and kicked open the half-latched door without the least gentleness, then stopped the girl who had wanted to scout ahead. "I'll go first."

With the ability to sense death's omen, he did not have the face to let someone else test the waters.

"Be careful."

The sword-bearer did not object.

Amy Ulysses nodded to her, then cautiously slipped in up to half his body.

No danger.

There was no sudden attack, nor any trap. Inside Giant Paul's mansion, aside from the same heart-stopping silence, there was nothing particularly unusual.

Wait—

Not nothing. The boy, whose nerves were taut with tension, only now noticed the anomaly: from the moment he entered, there had been a faint smell of blood in the air.

What had happened?

He followed the source of the scent, and then...

Dried crimson bloodstains.

They had been there for some time, he thought, slowly bending down as he prepared to lift the tablecloth and inspect the body that might be hidden beneath.

As the cloth was raised, what appeared before his eyes was...

An eye?

Run!

Almost at the same moment he saw that eye, the Glory-Bearer leapt back violently. The entire table was flipped upside down by the movement of the monster concealed beneath it, and what appeared before Amy was a strange humanoid creature with four faces, six arms, and three legs.

A stitched-together monster.

The boy whispered inwardly. Such demons were not uncommon in the Deep Night or even the Mist District. Some believed this monster, crudely assembled from human limbs, was an advanced form of ghoul, but more people sneered at that idea. Compared with the wildly varied ghouls, whose strength differed greatly from one to another, the stitched-together monster possessed only power that could still be called decent; it was more fitting to classify it as a subcategory within the broader race of ghouls than as an evolved species.

"What terrible taste."

The vast disparity in strength left Amy with enough leisure to judge the maker's appalling taste, but his idle time ended there. The appearance of the four-faced, six-armed, three-legged stitched-together monster seemed to sound the horn for the demons to gather. Dense, horrifying creatures that made the scalp prickle surged from every corner of the room, surrounding the prey that had stepped into the trap.

"Mia." The Glory-Bearer tightened his grip on his sword. "Keep the field covered for me."

The demons were numerous and varied, but in the boy's eyes, who had slain higher demons more than once, they were still not troublesome. The only thing to worry about was the lord that had exalted them into demons—though there was no evidence to support his guess, nor any certainty that the being harbored ill intent, he swore by his intuition that something was watching them from the dark.

For that reason, they needed a mobile fighting force, just in case.

Shaking his head, the boy cast aside distracting thoughts. The number of demons gathered in Giant Paul's mansion was by no means small. Though they were still some distance from being troublesome, they were not foes to be taken lightly. If they happened to run into one of those unrecorded demons they had first encountered, demons with special abilities, then a moment's carelessness would truly leave no time even to cry.

A self-mocking smile traced itself across Amy Ulysses's lips.

Then the flash of the blade was drawn—

Thirty-seven breaths later, only a field of corpses remained on the ground.

And one boy.